Some things really do take on a life of their own.

When you walk down the stairs into Ron Slivka’s basement, you transport into his imaginary world created around an 800-square-foot Lionel O gauge model train layout.

The huge display includes over a dozen Legacy engines and hundreds of train cars and was conceived and built exclusively by Slivka, a former plumber and current psychiatric nurse practitioner. His manual and mechanical skills go beyond the construction of his hobby.

“Forty years ago I built my house with my brother-in-law, Rich Orsulak,” said Slivka, who lives in Summit Hill with Corrine, his wife of 40 years. Originally from Nesquehoning and a graduate of Panther Valley High School, Slivka became interested in model railroading from Charlie Whitehead, a friend and classmate who “knew everything” about trains.”

Pizza box mountains

Slivka, publicly known for the past 20 years as the voice of Panther Valley football and famous for his trademark staccato call of, “Penalty flaaaggg,” estimates he spends 30 hours a week working with his trains. He has designed and built a fully operational city and countryside that will soon have a lake filled with circulating water.

“That’s for the little people who will be swimming and sunbathing,” he said with a laugh.

Two wired electric panels with 25 switches feed large black transformers that operate individual sections of the tracks. The high-tech Lionel Chief engines are connected to Bluetooth and are remotely operated through Slivka’s iPhone. The trains run with all the bells and whistles (pun intended) and surround a flat-panel TV set where he watches football games.

Creating the vast mountain and valley scenery has been his greatest challenge.

“To make the grass-covered mountain edges, I first glued about 15 pizza boxes to the wall,” he said. “Then to glue the fine green particles onto the wall became my next challenge. I built a small apparatus made with a short hollow stick with a tiny plastic funnel connected to the top of the stick. Then I attached a piece of aquarium flexible tubing to the back of the stick.”

Slivka explained that would first coat the fronts of the pizza boxes with glue. Then he would run a small air compressor through the stick while the tiny green particles were slowly dropping down from the funnel.

“So what I did was force air into the stick to blow the green particles dropping from the funnel onto the glue of the pizza boxes and they would stick and look like natural scenery.”

The layout is complete with blue painted skies with stick-on white clouds “floating” above the tracks.

Always looking for something interesting to add to his display, Slivka recently purchased an animated firehouse where little firefighters actually slide down poles before they get onto their firetruck.

Planes, trains and automobiles

When Slivak isn’t in his basement tinkering with his trains, he likes to experience other methods of transportation.

Recently, he took 10 lessons to fly a Little Piper airplane. “On one of my training flights, the pilot told me to get inside a wind drift and shut the engine off. I said, ‘I don’t think I want to do that.’ So it came down to continue my flying lessons or buy a Corvette that I had my eyes on,” he said. “I bought the Corvette.”

In another airplane event, Slivka was about to be a passenger in an authentic World War II B52 bomber when Corrine began to shout out his name while she was running up to him boarding the plane.

“Give me the car keys,” she said. “Just in case.”

Lost in trains

“He just loves his trains,” said Corrine, who has her own fascination about the paranormal. “Ron bought me an Area 51 train set.”

Area 51 is a secluded military air base in Nevada. Some people believe the hangers house crashed alien aircraft that have been secretly stored by the American government.

Corrine also has books and videos about psychic mediums, ghosts and alien investigations.

“And when you pass our house, you’ll see a 7-foot cement statue of Sasquatch standing next to his son on our front lawn,” said Slivka.

When he enters his world of trains, Slivka sees the experience as therapeutic.

“We live in a troubled world and I work with troubled kids every day on my job,” he said. “I can spend an entire Saturday in my basement and just let my mind get lost in my trains.”

As he prepares his passion for a Christmas season spectacular, Slivka put a punctuation mark on exactly what his hobby does for him.

“It relaxes me.”