Kickin’ it with the Homies in Union Station’s model train exhibit
I was at Union Station last weekend, enjoying the model trains weaving around the extensive set-up in the lobby, when I noticed some familiar faces among the exhibit’s tiny populace.
Not far from the accident scene that C.J. Janovy recently photographed, a cluster of little dudes are hanging out on a rocky ridge. But unlike the multitude of other plastic people in the set, likely acquired from hobby shops and model-railroad enthusiast kits, these are Homies, the collectible 50-cent characters once sold in vending machines in the lobbies of grocery stores and laundromats.
For a while, the little dudes had quite a niche in pop culture. But you don’t see ’em around so much anymore — and I definitely didn’t expect to see them kickin’ it in the quaint world erected by Union Station’s model railroad club.
Luckily, Mike Laboi, vice president of the Union Station Model Railroad Society, was on hand to tell me the story of how these Homies found their way to this side of the tracks.
