Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
The great big miniature life of trains
You might not know about it, but there’s a hidden world in Phoenixville.
In the basement of an old mansion, diagonally across from the library at Second and Main streets, is a huge – and miniature at the same time – model train display.
The Schuylkill Valley Model Railroad Club was organized in 1968, moved to the existing site in 1972 and had its first open house in 1975.
“We try to tell stories,” Rob Super, club president said.
“We like to make things very realistic so that you actually think you’re on a real railroad in the heyday of railroading in the 1950s and 1960s,” member Barbara Knight said.
Model trains are all about show and tell – often from a day when rails and iron horses ruled, a time before interstates and long haul truckers.
In Phoenixville, push a button and a voice will exclaim that the trains are “ready to roll.” A summer thunderstorm lights up the skies. Listen to the sound of steam hissing or watch coal being shoveled. You can hear a sharp whistle or blasting horn.
In Phoenixville the B&O Railroad, Reading Railroad and the Phoenixville to Kimberton Line are not forgotten.
There’s even Gillespie Street, and Middlestead Avenue, which were named after members.
Many real and fictional businesses hang a sign out front. Much is based on reality, although, by design, the fictional Hathaway Junction, is just about half way along the route.
Like most layouts, all the trains running on more than 700 feet of track in a 1,000 square foot area, in Phoenixville, are HO gauge (1/87 scale) or half of “O” gauge.
Northlandz, the largest model railroad set in the world, is located in Flemington, N.J.
There is 40,000 feet of track housed in an enormous 52,000-square-foot building run by Bruce Williams Zaccagnino.
Like most of model railroaders I spoke with, a set-up is never complete. These model train buffs are always adding to and fiddling.
“Piece by piece, inch by inch, everything’s a cinch,” is Zaccagnino’s motto.
“There’s a lifetime of work here.”
With three or four wrecks a day, it seems like Zaccagnino would crush the scenery and miniature figures.
Zaccagnino said he is able to safely reach every square inch of the setup in New Jersey at least two different ways.
Chris Gans owns the 108-year-old Nicholas Trains shop in Broomall.
It’s not just kids who love working with miniatures. The 20,000-square-foot store is devoted primarily to trains.
“It’s mostly for the parents but they blame it on their kids,” the shop owner said. “The only way they can get away with it is to tell the wife it’s for the kids. He’s the big kid. As soon as it gets set they want to make it bigger.”
We grew up with a magical train set that was stored with the Christmas stuff and set up just once per year.
Brandywine River Museum takes the paintings off a gallery’s walls and sets up a train exhibit at Christmastime.
“Some people just come here for the trains at Christmas – it’s a real tradition,” said Virginia O’Hara, curator of collections and coordinator of curatorial affairs. “They came as children, and now they’re bringing the children and even their grandchildren.”
So much of this hobby is make-believe. Just feet away, you can view the great Wyeth paintings and watch Santa’s sleigh led by a red-nosed reindeer fly around the gallery as the trains run below.
I loved the model trains at the Choo-Choo Barn in Lancaster County. One family has designed the whole set-up, including an Amish village with straw-hatted men swinging hammers during a barn raising. Miniature Amish plow with horses and it’s tough to miss the spark of a welder’s torch.
At the Choo-Choo Barn you can watch a pitcher hold a runner on base, and an American flag blowing in the breeze.
Roadside America in Shartlesville runs on the same principle but with not as many trains. Magically, every half hour, the huge display goes dark and houselights and headlights light up the homes and roadways, while patriotic music blasts through the sound system.
On display at the Toy Train Museum in Lancaster County are hundreds of replica train cars of all shapes and sizes. Some date to the mid-1800s.
There are lots of buttons here to push.
My favorite, a fire truck with sirens blasting, races out of City Fire Department 234. But only after a fireman slides down a pole and a Dalmatian barks.
It’s fun to suspend belief for just a moment and make believe that’s a real whistle blowing or the clickety clack of a steam engine puffing along.
From a perch high above, the figures, mountains and buildings look both miniscule and larger than life at the same instant.
You can almost believe it’s
real. Maybe it is?
The trains in Phoenixville run at no charge and are open to the public on select dates and times, mostly in November, December and January. For
information go to www. svmrrc.com or call 610935-1126.