Photos by Rob Varela / Star staff Railfest attendees ride the "speeder" on the railroad tracks at the Fillmore & Western station Saturday.

Electrical technician Michael Morgan demonstrates the Railroad Historical Society's railroad turntable. Morgan is a member of the society's board of directors.

About 10 a.m. Saturday, Central Park in downtown Fillmore suddenly came to life — a previous life.

Two historic passenger trains chugged away from the platform — one headed to Piru, the other to Santa Paula.

Meanwhile, an 85-ton turntable attracted onlookers armed with cameras as it creaked to life and started a slow, clockwise rotation with a decades-old locomotive seated on top.

The public started to pour in to the park as this year's Railfest got under way. The free event continues from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.

The crowd was young and old, including grown men with T-shirts that read things like "still plays with trains." Some of the visitors considered themselves railroad enthusiasts, but not Greg and Gloria Lins of Moorpark.

"No, we're just old people," Gloria Lins said. The Lins have been to the festival before, sometimes to bring along their grandchildren. This year, the attraction for them was the turntable.

The century-old turntable was the main attraction of the festival. In 1906, the Canadian National Railway built the 96-foot all-steel turntable. It was put to use in Capreol, Ontario, until sometime in the 1980s.

In the mid-1990s, the newly formed Santa Clara River Valley Railroad Historical Society started a search for a railroad turntable, eventually tracking down the aging table in Ontario and purchasing it for about $15,000.

The huge cargo was brought across the country (and misplaced a couple of times) by Union Pacific and delivered to Oxnard in 1997. Finally, it found its way into Fillmore to complete its journey. What should have been a two-year project, according to the society's director, Steven Pierce, somehow turned into a decade-long effort to fund the installation.

"We sold a lot of barbecue sandwiches to raise the money," Pierce said. The turntable is thought to be the only one of its kind installed in the last 50 years. According to Pierce, railways have been scrapping the rotating tracks steadily for the past few years.

While Pierce and the rest of the Railroad Historical Society might feel a sense of relief that its most ambitious project in its 13-year history is completed, the table is just one of three phases in a larger project.

Next up: They plan to build a roundhouse, where cars can be parked and stored. Beyond that, the group hopes to complete the project with a Railroad Interpretive Center, built adjacent to the roundhouse and turntable. The center would be used as a museum and education center by the Railroad Historical Society.

An anticipated completion date for all three phases, as with the turntable project, hinges on fundraising.

"None of us are allowed to quit or die until we're done," Pierce said. "It's a labor of love to make this happen."