Photo by Jenny Kirk Hunter Louwagie poses alongside a maze of connecting train sets he designed and built in his garage recently for a train show to the public — the fifth straight year he’s exhibited his train track creations.

MARSHALL — For as long as he can remember, 13-year-old Hunter Louwagie has been passionate about trains.

Louwagie talks about trains, he watches YouTube videos of trains and he builds impressive train tracks as well.

“They’re my favorite thing to do,” Louwagie said. “I don’t remember, but for my first birthday, I got a push-along train.”

Louwagie’s parents — Jen and Bill — said that family members started purchasing trains and train tracks for him as early as his second birthday.

“Now he has a large collection going,” Jen Louwagie said. “He’s got tubs and tubs and tubs in the basement.”

This year marks the fifth that Hunter Louwagie has given a train show for two weekends in the summer. Many attended this past Saturday.

“Get ready to be amazed,” he said to visitors at his show.

While the elaborate setup looks like it must have taken a long time to create, Louwagie said it only took half a day to build all of it.

“I did this the day after school got done,” he said. “Off of YouTube, that’s where I get most of my ideas.”

Louwagie’s favorite train set right now is also his newest one — he got it this past Christmas.

“It’s called the Sky-High Bridge Jump,” he said. “There’s also another action one. It’s called Shipwreck Rail set.”

Both of the sets are Fisher-Price Thomas and Friends TrackMaster products.

“That’s what he wanted for Christmas,” Jen Louwagie said. “The day after he got the Sky Jump, it wouldn’t work, so he was a little sad. But then he watched YouTube and found that WD-40 spray would help. Then it worked.”

Hunter Louwagie also has a lot of other neat sets, including ones with a wobbly bridge and others that have lights and sounds.

“There’s also play kids,” Louwagie said. “They’re like Tommy versions of Lego mini-figures.”

Jen Louwagie said her son had been thinking about the train show design all year. Roughly a month ago, he told his parents that he would need about 8-10 tables for the setup.

“He had his layout and his plan and somehow we were able to round up 10 tables,” she said. “I asked him how many trains he thinks will be running and he said, ‘Mom, I don’t know. But then he counted and it was 30. We joked about getting a battery sponsor.”

Along with Thomas, Ryan, Hugo and other train engines, Hunter Louwagie also has some from Japan.

“I have Japanese trains from Plarail (pronounced Pla Rail in English),” Louwagie said. “That’s what they call it in Japan. It has two speeds. There’s ‘on’ and ‘high.’ We’re going to go at high speed.”

Though it’s difficult, he has a few favorites.

“The paint-splattered Thomas is one of my favorite engines,” Louwagie said.

With multiple trains going at the same time, there was a steady hum bouncing off the garage walls. Louwagie was careful to watch — to be ready — when certain trains were outpacing others and needed to be put on a different track.

“Silver Streak is the faster one,” he said. “Sometimes I modify them. It was with the newer TrackMasters, so I basically took out the motor and stuff. Then I put in a different motor and it was like (really fast).”

Once in awhile, Louwagie makes the engines go backward. In the past, he also made a snow scene and even tracks that can float on water.

“There’s like foam mats under the tracks,” Louwagie said. “You have it upside down. You use spray adhesive to stick the track onto the piece.”

Jen Louwagie said her son put the foam underneath the track, put it all together and then placed it in the family’s kiddie pool.

“The only bad thing is — the Classic TrackMaster and the Old TrackMaster, even the bullet trains would survive going under water — but the newer TrackMaster, like Ryan and the new Thomas, after a couple of days, they’ll just die,” Hunter Louwagie said. “The water gets into this little crack down here and it gets stuck inside. There’s no way for the water to get out.”

Sometimes, Louwagie builds the train tracks upward.

“He’s made spirals, too,” Jen Louwagie said. “They take a lot of towers to spiral them up so high. But this is probably his best layout.”

While the 13-year-old Louwagie has constructed fascinating sets over the years, he also has a YouTube channel — HunterTube — and is starting a new series. He uses a kid version of GoPro, a camera that lets the user develop its own mobile apps and video-editing software.

“On my YouTube channel, I’ll be starting a series,” he said. “It’s called ‘Thomas’ TrackMaster Adventures.’ I make little videos and upload the little videos. There’s like almost 100 videos on my channel. When there’s little clips, it’s easier to work with.”

Jen Louwagie said her oldest son wrote the scripts for the series. He also asks younger brothers — 10-year-old Gabe and 8-year-old Jamison — to be part of the action.

“Hunter has the scripts all written out,” Louwagie said. “It’s like a play. Then they act it out and they’ll videotape it. The good thing about him writing stories is that it’s educational.”

Louwagie explained that Hunter is high functioning, but that he has special needs.

“He’s under the spectrum of autism,” she said. “So any type of incentive with trains, that’s what helps him stay focused on jobs — daily activities and school. A lot of autistic children have one big direction or obsession. It’s like one fascination, like Harry Potter — some kind of fixation or something that’s their thing.”

The train-centered incentives began in preschool.

“He had issues with focusing and different things like that, so his teachers made a chart that had Thomas the Train for his organizational skills,” Jen Louwagie said. They took a picture of him starting his day, unpacking things.”

In later years, train sets became part of Hunter’s incentive chart goals.

“I purchase train tracks and he earns them,” Jen Louwagie said. “It’s part of his IEP (individualized education program). It also helps to build onto his passion. Being 13, he’s still very young at heart.”

Bev Welu, a paraprofessional at Marshall Middle School, has known him for nearly three years.

“Hunter is a very unique individual,” Welu said. “When he has an idea, it becomes a passion and he doesn’t let it go until he has created something from his idea. Hunter has the capabilities of making almost anything work.”

Welu said the 13-year-old is most satisfied when he sees other people enjoying what he designed.

“Last year, he built a huge Hot Wheels car set in his garage, which took up the whole space,” she said. “But that wasn’t enough. He had bigger dreams. The two words that come to mind are ‘detailed’ and ‘meticulous.’ You can pick that up just by listening to him talk about the train set and looking at it.”

Hunter Louwagie also gets excited when he starts talking about his YouTube channel and upcoming series.

“The picture on my channel is basically me as a TrackMaster engine,” he said. “This is based off the real, wooden railway models. It’s called My Custom engine. It comes with an engine, a book and a collector’s card.”

Louwagie started putting out the series on Monday, followed by other episodes two days later.

“All of next week and most of the first week of July, I’ll be busy with my series,” Hunter Louwagie said. “I have this thing where I’m going to have a short on July 6. It’s called the Fourth of July show.”

Neither of his younger brothers have the same fascination with trains as Hunter does, but they do help out when needed. All three of them have YouTube channels.

“I first get a line in Episode 2 and all it is, is ‘Hello,'” Gabe Louwagie said.

Hunter Louwagie explained that his brothers don’t get major roles until Episode 5.

“It’s because that’s when they arrive on Sodor,” he said. “In Episode 2, I arrive.”

Louwagie said he did a test episode with both Hugo trains.

“Hugo is a Rail Zeppelin,” he said. “He’s zeppelin with wheels. The test run is where Hugo meets his clone. His clone starts talking to him and he runs away yelling. He’s like, ‘Was it something I said?’ but it sounds muffled. Then there’s a bit of a talk on a black screen.”

Jen Louwagie said her son doesn’t play with trains all the times. He does take some breaks.

“I went from trains to Special Agent Oso, or when the cartoon movie was out, I was into Francesco Bernoulli from ‘Cars 2,'” Hunter Louwagie said. “They just got ‘Cars 3’ in theaters. We’ve seen all three movies.”

When he does focus on trains, however, he pretty much takes up the entire basement, Jen Louwagie said.

“Oh, the things we step on,” she said.

While his brothers are supportive, they also joke about the organized chaos that is train tracks everywhere.

“Sometimes Hunter has to clean the whole basement,” Gabe Louwagie said. “Then he rebuilds it. Sometimes, I stub my foot on one of them, and I say, ‘Hunter, why do you always have trains in the basement?'”

Gabe also noted that his older brother doesn’t like being disturbed sometimes when he’s being creative.

“If the door is shut, he sometimes has a paper up there that says, ‘No one disturb me — not even Mom,'” he said.

Once, Hunter wanted to build train tracks around the entire house.

“He has enough track to probably go around the house twice,” Bill Louwagie said. “He went around the inside of the house when he was younger. Now, all that stuff needs to go downstairs.”

While anyone is invited to attend one of the train shows, teachers, relatives and teachers are the primary ones.

“There’s usually a steady crowd,” Jen Louwagie said. “I am amazed. Our neighbors came last weekend. That afternoon, they got out their train set and invited us over. They had their own train show. It was really neat that Hunter had that influence on them.”

When his mom suggested working at a toy store someday, Hunter Louwagie said he was thinking of working for Fisher-Price.

When asked if he might ever get married someday and if his wife would have to like trains, Louwagie said ‘Yes,’ he’d like to be married, but that he didn’t mind if she liked trains or not.

“But my kids will have to like trains,” he said.

With five successful train shows under his belt, it’s a mystery as to what the talented Louwagie will create next.

“He told me that it is a secret what he is going to build next and that I would just have to wait to see it,” Welu said.