He was a fireman and very interested in the history of fire engines. Ives designed a 4th of July scene with an antique fire engine parade, two working trains, and a rolling digital sign that could display six different messages. More typical, however, is a woman who simply wanted a train of her own. Her two brothers had played with model trains as children. So had her sons who were now grown and gone.
Ives sometimes recreates a scene from a customer's hometown.
A man in California, for example, who grew up in Pennsylvania sent Ives a diagram of his childhood neighborhood. He was able to compact the remembered elements into a single, condensed railroad layout. Storefronts had the correct merchants' names, buildings the correct orientation, and so on. Sometimes Ives works with photographs as well as memories and diagrams. He has recreated Oneonta, New York in the 1940s, when it was an important railroad town.