The Miniature Railroad and Village located at the Carnegie Science Center has origins dating back 100 years. In 1919 Charles Bowdish created a holiday train display in his home in the small town of Brookville, Pennsylvania.
In 1954 it was moved to Buhl Planetarium where it resided until that closed, and moved to it’s current located at the science center in 1992.
The display features life and times in Western Pennsylvania between the 1880s and 1930s.
IT’S GROUNDHOG DAY! The famed groundhog of Punxsutawney and his home on Gobblers Knob. Will it be an early spring?
A steel mill. This one is a replica of one in Sharon, PA. Amazingly there are numerous movements of cranes, lifts and other features throughout.
The lights of the ovens in the mill are illuminated.
The roundhouse supports the trains that are running throughout the exhibit.
Everything in the 83′ x 30′ display is hand made by the volunteers and staff. It is based on the ‘O’ scale, 1/4 inch = 1 foot.
My personal favorite is Forbes Field, the baseball stadium from 1909-1970. Each ‘person’ is a painted Q tip.
The detail even includes a runner going head first into second base.
The model features hundreds of actual Western Pennsylvania buildings, but not in any geographic detail. While Forbes Field is exact, there was no train running by the stadium – it was sitting in the middle of a neighborhood.
For locals they can spend hours searching out the places they knew or grew up near.
The day we were there a very nice young lady named Nicole offered to show us the back room where they make all of the buildings and accessories.
They have many completed buildings, just not enough room to display them. As noted previously everything is hand made – no kits here.
Some spare rail cars.
The hilly terrain of Western PA is well represented.
A streetcar that became a diner.
Rodgers Field, located near Oakmont, was Pittsburgh first municipal airport. It operated from 1925-1935.
The famed Frank Lloyd Wright home Fallingwater. Fortunately the real one does not overlook a steel mill.
A small ‘patch town’ – coal mine town.
The roller coaster at Luna Park. Opened in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1905, it was only around for a few years before closing.
The trees and bushes are made from hydrangeas that are collected and dried. From there each one is hand made using a twisted copper wire for the trunk and limbs. Their goal is that no two trees are exactly alike.
After gluing they paint the tree for the 3 primary seasons, summer, fall and winter. Each tree can take up to 1 day to make, and there are hundreds of thousands of trees on display.
There are larger model train displays around, but this one is well worth the visit.
RDZ Photography 