Local man expresses love of railroad

At every opportunity, Lakewood Ranch financial planner Jim Zientara pulls out a business card made specifically for his role in his other "job," the one as engineer with the Florida Railroad Museum. 

Zientara, who works at Raymond James in Lakewood Ranch, isn't really an engineer, but he does drive publicity for the museum, which is located in Parrish.

“When the people come, that’s the pleasure for me,” he said. 

About two weekends a month, Zientara volunteers at the Florida Railroad Museum, working on its two scheduled daily runs. He dresses in an engineer’s cap, blue-striped overalls and a cherry red scarf tied around his neck. In a bag, he keeps a bottle of water and a stash of museum brochures touting information about the museum and upcoming events.

He walks through the train cars, conversing with guests and highlighting upcoming events, such as the Civil War reenactment and the North Pole Express.

The 73-year-old Zientara, who has two grown children and four grandchildren, has been on most of the rides himself. 

At the Railroad Museum’s work station in the town of Willow, about six miles from the main museum, Zientara followed fellow museum member John Halash through train cars, talking about the history of each. One passenger car is the only one remaining of the 100 built in 1920. Another is a Pullman overnight sleeper called the “Bradenton” used in the 1950s and 1960s when it serviced the eastern United States.

“Frequently, cities had a car named after them,” Zientara said. “No one can use that name as long as the car is in existence.”

Another called the New Georgia started on the Alaska Railroad and later roamed the southern United States under the Seaboard Air Line flag. Zientara said how the No. 250 Parlor car, which is air conditioned, was filled with 24 people for the museum’s Murder Mystery Dinner. 

“This is our fancy car,” Zientara said. “I like it.”

Like many train enthusiasts, Zientara’s affection for locomotives was sparked during his childhood.

At 5 years old, he and his dad, the late Joe Zientara, set up an American Flyer train set around the family’s Christmas tree. The train set was his biggest connection to the railroad until 1966, the year he married his wife of 50 years, Fran. Her sister and brother-in-law, Gay and Ed Liessem, now of Seattle, were involved in the National Model Railroad Association. 

“We started going to the conventions because they were interested and that was our yearly family reunion,” Fran Zientara said. “Jim started buying model railroad cars and collecting them. He naturally had an affinity for the big rail cars, too. Every time we went on vacation, we’d go see the railroad museums.”

After Jim earned his masters degree in finance in 1970, he worked in Chicago and commuted by train each day from the couple's home in Illinois. He would join thousands of workers on a train commute into and out of the city and he enjoyed the ride and the people who rode it with him.

“Everybody was a commuter,” Zientara said. “It’s fun — like a big bus on a track with thousands of other people. You see all the same guys all the time, morning and night. 

“In the summer, the air conditioning would break, so it was really hot,” he said. “In the winter, the tracks would freeze so the train wouldn’t move.”

In 1972, the Zientaras moved to Sarasota, but Jim’s fascination with trains never derailed.

“Anywhere I go on vacation, I look for trains to ride,” Zientara said. “They’re big. They’re powerful. They’re comfortable.”

He takes at least one train ride a year, whether in the United States, Canada or Europe.

The fastest train he’s ridden is the TGV in France that tops out at 200 mph. The slowest train was a cog train that climbs up mountains such as the one to Pikes Peak in Colorado. This type of train is used for steep inclines and has an engine fitted with a cog that meshes with a toothed rack laid between the rails. The engine pulls itself up and down the track.

The most extensive train event was when he and Fran flew to Colorado to join Vacations by Rail and in seven days, a bus took them to six long rides in tourist trains in the mountains of Colorado.

He’s a member of the Florida Live Steamers, the National Model Railroad Association and subscribes to Train magazine.

He attends conventions for model and large-scale trains alike and collects the more unique N-scale model train cars, which have a track gauge of 9 mm.

He has yet to visit the world's biggest model railroad, which is located in Hamburg, Germany. It's called Miniatur Wunderland.

“It's on my to-do list,” he said.

Zientara’s involvement with the Florida Railroad Museum, in particular, began about a decade ago, while he was a member of the Hole in the Head Gang, a local group of Florida Old West re-enactors. Zientara played a cowboy invading the train during a show that runs four times a year.

“When he found out about the Parrish railroad museum, he was gung-ho and that was it,” Fran Zientara said. “He said, ‘Boy this is fun.’”

Annual ridership for the museum was about 30,000 year at the time. Zientara and museum mechanics supervisor Glenn Miley began their public relations campaign in 2014. Jim Zientara is the spokesman, addressing television audiences, civics groups and private clubs.

Since then, ridership has increased to more than 53,000 annually. As an example, tickets for the North Pole Express special event went on sale Sept. 5 and 14,000 tickets were sold out by Sept. 12.

Club president Pat Masterson is glad to have Jim Zientara aboard so he and the other museum members can focus on the inner-workings of the train.

“It’s a valuable asset,” Masterson said of having Zientara promote the museum. “Word of mouth is a good thing. It’s like a virus spreading. That’s what we need.”