Museum's model railroad setup is holiday tradition
HARMONY — The Harmony Museum's annual Christmas season model railroad display is on view to museum visitors into early January.
The antique Yobp-Eckstein log village with O-gauge train and trolley, and the Royer two-train HO layout created in 2012 can be seen during guided museum tours.
They are in the museum's 1810 Wagner House annex that includes a permanent exhibit about the area's railroad history.
The Yobp-Eckstein village combines a Civil War-era train and early 20th century street car, both 1950s Lionel toys, with log structures hand-built in the 1930s. It presents a snowy seasonal scene that includes a community Christmas tree and a nativity near the church. Townspeople go about their business on foot and in hand-carved sleighs and wagons, livestock occupy the barnyard and deer occupy a wooded hill.
William Yobp, who lived from 1903 to 1973, made the buildings, sleighs and wagons for a Christmas village in his family's New Kensington home.
In the 1950s Yobp gave the houses, a church, a bank barn and a mill to his son-in-law, Ronald Eckstein, for the Christmas railroad platform he made for his family's living room near Renfrew. “The General” of the Civil War's “Great Locomotive Chase” pulls passenger and freight cars while the trolley loops through the settlement.In 2006, Eckstein and his family donated the platform to Historic Harmony.Museum tours are offered from 1 to 4 p.m. daily, except when the museum is closed Mondays and holidays. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for senior citizens age 60 and older, and $3 for youths ages 6 to 17. Call 724-452-7341.A $1 donation is requested to only view the model train display.
