All Aboard!
HARMONY — The Harmony Museum has expanded its holiday model railroad display with a new layout that contains miniature historical buildings.
The antique Yobp-Eckstein log village and O-gauge railroad are now joined by an HO-gauge layout.
Kathy Luek, museum administrator, said the displays bring in people of all ages from around the region, but added that the attraction is especially popular with children.
“They're really just amazed and wide-eyed at it,” she said. “They love watching the train come towards them and then just follow it down and run back and forth.”
For 2012, Historic Harmony member John Royer of Adams Township built a 4-by-6-foot HO platform representing small-town America in the second half of the 19th century. Two track loops are traveled by period trains — donated by another Historic Harmony member — a Baltimore & Ohio passenger-freight combination of mostly Bachmann rolling stock, and, from the 1970s, Union Pacific passenger cars by Bachmann, pulled by a Tyco Southern Railway engine.
This layout's buildings, featuring houses, commercial structures, and passenger and freight stations, were assembled by volunteers for a 2006-07 layout that was part of an exhibit at Old Economy Village in Ambridge.
That display later went to Ohio Valley Lines Model Railroad Club in Ambridge, which donated the 10 buildings in Royer's Harmony Museum display.
Also new this year is a hands-on wood push train for preschoolers to manipulate on a tiny, child-level table.
They share space in the museum's circa 1810 Wagner House annex with an exhibit about area railroads.
The snow laden Yobp-Eckstein village display is comprised of an O-gauge Civil War era train and early 20th-century street car, both 1950s Lionel toys, as well as handmade log structures — five houses plus a Pennsylvania barn with sandstone foundation, a church and grist mill.
It includes a community Christmas tree and Nativity scene. Townspeople go about their business on foot and in hand-carved sleighs and wagons, livestock roam the barnyard while a cow is milked, and some deer hide on a wooded hillside along with a skunk and a fox.
Luek said children especially are amused with trying to find figurines of a skunk and flamingos that are well-placed and hard to spot on the display.
“It really gets everyone in the holiday spirit,” she said.
The late William Yobp crafted the buildings, sleighs and wagons during the 1930s as a Christmas village display in his family's New Kensington living room.
In the 1950s, Yobp's son-in-law, the late Ronald Eckstein, made them part of a 5-by-8-foot Christmas railroad platform at his home near Renfrew. Its tracks carry “The General” of Civil War Great Locomotive Chase fame pulling Western & Atlantic Railroad cars and a trolley. In 2006, Eckstein and his family donated the platform to Historic Harmony, which operates the museum at 218 Mercer St.
The display is available for viewing during regular tours from 1 to 4 p.m. daily, except Mondays and holidays.
Call 724-452-7341 or visit www.harmonymuseum.org.
