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SPRINGDALE — Yellow giraffe necks stick out of blue train cars labeled, “Bronx Zoo.”

The locomotive at the front belongs to the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway. A single dark green passenger car curves in the other direction. The blue and orange Lionel Village Trolley bounces off buffer stops, back and forth through a straight mountain tunnel. The tracks rattle.

The noise and size of these model trains — sitting on a table in a quaint museum — are minuscule compared to the idle one parked outside. It belongs to the Arkansas and Missouri Railroad, a Class III locomotive operating a 150-mile vertical route from Monett, Mo., to Fort Smith.

Saturday morning’s trip is a few hours from Springdale to Winslow and back. Upcoming trips will reach further south to Van Buren.

The track in Fayetteville is laid down in sight of Baum-Walker Stadium, where the University of Arkansas baseball team plays its home games. Every home run hit by a Razorback is followed by a recording of a locomotive horn.

The real locomotive blares as it approaches cars on West 15th Street across from the stadium. It is not meant as a tip of the cap to the Razorbacks. The railroad engineer, who is driving, is required to sound the letter Q in Morse code, meaning a crossing. Otherwise, A&M could face a fine for public safety.

But there are Arkansas fans riding this train. At least a few are attending the Razorbacks’ baseball game at 2 p.m. on Saturday against Stetson.

* * *

Jeremiah Wingfield, 23, leans back against a yellow railing on the outside platform of Parlor Car No. 107. It is in the back, for now.

A native of North Little Rock, Wingfield is wearing cream-colored sneakers with red laces, long white Nike socks, dark shorts and a red Arkansas T-shirt. He soon layers up with a rain jacket on a brisk and gray morning. A fog looms.

Wingfield occasionally pokes his head out to watch the connected cars further ahead. A tunnel startles him. As the car fades into darkness, 19-year-old passenger conductor Aidan Goletz supervises the platform.

“This tunnel is more than a quarter-mile long,” he says.

“What?!” Wingfield replies in disbelief.

“This is the Winslow Tunnel,” Wingfield realizes without skipping a beat.

Wingfield became a die-hard Razorback fan at birth and took an interest in trains at a young age. He always asked his dad where the nearby Union Pacific Railroad cars were heading. Now he is likely the only happy person in a line of autos halted by a moving train at a crossing.

“Me and my wife will go out and watch trains,” Wingfield said. “It’s really beautiful. We always find a pretty spot and sit and watch the light to see if a train comes. It’s fun. It’s kind of like hunting or bird watching. Railfanning. That’s what we call it. I’m on cloud nine right now.”

* * *

Wingfield’s coworker handed him an envelope to open on his wedding day. It read, “Congrats, JW,” and came with a $200 credit for A&M. The coworker had to research a little. Wingfield, on the other hand, owns tons of railroad books at his mom’s house. He’s an encyclopedia.

“I’m looking at those engines,” he said. “Those are ALCO C420s, 2,000 horsepower each.”

Wingfield has been assembling a model train set, similar to the one in the museum, for the past year inside his rented North Little Rock home. His wife, Rebecca, let him have the extra room.

“We call that the train room,” he said.

They have built the table-top model buildings that can take six hours to construct and painted them together. Wingfield recently jumped on a sale for an A&M locomotive just like the one powering Saturday’s train. Released in 2006, the discontinued model cost $190, including shipping.

“Honestly, I’ve spent way more,” he said.

Wingfield bought it off Facebook, where he is in separate groups for collectors and “Arkansas Railfans.” The latter helps people track trains.

Wingfield also enjoys in-person train shows. He got up at 5:30 a.m. to drive to the 23rd annual show in Northwest Arkansas a little over a month ago. He purchased a lighted passenger car for his Amtrak Texas Eagle set and, from an older vendor, a hand-crafted weathered building.

“He told me this was his last train show and he was selling all of his stuff,” Wingfield said.

Each locomotive has a tiny computer chip. Wingfield uses digital command control, which allows him to run up to six sounding trains on a single track without touching each other. The setup is purposely lightweight, sits on two sawhorses and is temporary.

“When I own my house, it’s going to be a much more permanent installation,” Wingfield said. “I’m going to probably build a foot off the wall and it’s going to go all the way around the room. I’m going to have a bridge that I can take up and out, so you can walk in. It’s going to be huge.”

Wingfield wants to join Union Pacific and be based out of Little Rock, although he would live out of a suitcase. He passed a 100-question test and applied at the beginning of February for a job with the train crew, where he’d be a conductor connecting rail cars and throwing switches.

“I haven’t even gotten to the part where there’s a four-minute ladder hang,” Wingfield said. “Pick up an 80-pound knuckle coupler and replace it. So there’s going to be a physical test, a drug test and then they’ll see if I got the job or not. It’s a pretty lengthy process.”

* * *

An A&M conductor in a safety vest climbs onto the No. 107 platform. Passenger conductor Mike Castner, who turns 85 in May, takes a pen from his vest and draws on a napkin how the train turns around.

The passenger cars sit immobile while the locomotive detaches, does an oval loop on a parallel track and hooks up to No. 107, now at the front. The horn blasts three short times for an S in Morse code — the train is starting.

Coaches No. 105 and No. 106, named Golden Age and Mountain View, respectively, now sit at the back as the train heads north. They are roughly 100 years old and dance on the tracks more than the other cars due to their lighter weight.

“I always tell people, ‘When you’re drunk, you can walk straight,’ ” Castner says.

Castner once heard that a passenger mistook slits in the wall of No. 106 — meant to catch a dispenser’s drinking water — for a urinal.

“It was on the floor,” he says. “You could smell it. It was a long time ago.”

Castner sports a dark gray vest and a tie over a white dress shirt. His cap says “Conductor” in metal lettering with an A&M pin centered at the top. His vest is covered in more pins. Castner lives in Madison County. His thick white mustache contrasts an otherwise clean-shaven face.

Castner and former A&M coworkers have reunions at one end of the same car. A newer fireplace sits in the corner. The men and women in their 70s, 80s and 90s reminisce and catch up with each other’s lives. They didn’t ride together last year as a few of them were sick.

Once a general contractor and cabinet maker, Castner brings his tools into the empty train when it’s not running and remodels the cars alone. The “p-train” conductor points to the wood and windows he has refinished. Castner is also the railroad chaplain and has wed 36 couples. A designated bathroom with a lounge is tucked in a narrow hallway where the brides get ready.

“We call it a moving wedding,” he says.

Dome No. 108, Silver Feather, has an upstairs area where booths are encased in a protruding glass shell. In Diner-Lounge No. 109, the nonprofit organization LIFE Prep is teaching local students about the proper uses of artificial intelligence inside a car that entered service in 1950.

After the speaker is finished, two students huddle around a phone propped sideways on a table in the same “Spirit of Arkansas” car. They watch Missouri miss a potential game-winning shot at the end of regulation against the University of Arkansas men’s basketball team.

The train pulls into Springdale a little before the Razorbacks win 88-84 in overtime. As Wingfield gets off and heads to Baum-Walker Stadium, a line of cars on East Emma Avenue starts to pile up at the railroad crossing.

Matt Byrne is the Bob Holt Razorback Reporter, named in honor of the longtime reporter who covered University of Arkansas sports. This position is funded by the ADG Community Journalism Project.