The lights at the Penn Theater in Butler are not shining on a theater or musical act. Instead, they’re illuminating the makings of a miniature holiday world.

Cafeteria-style tables hold piles of scaled-down railroad track. An orange and off-white colored box reads: “Drive safely at night. Use Westinghouse safe-T-beam head lamps.” They’re light bulbs. For the trains.

On another long table, divided into neat sections, rest some pieces of twisted metal, 18-gauge mechanic’s wire, a Lionel train signal bridge, and boxes of bolts and tiny flathead screws.

Between the stage, where the large white movie screen rises up, and the first row of seats will sit the 12-foot by 12-foot display with additional elevated sections.

The layout belongs to W.C. Rasely, who got his first train 75 years ago when he was only 5. When he was a kid, the train set used to run around the Christmas tree and under the dining room table.

“We lived on New Castle Street. It took up the whole first floor,” said W.C., an only child.

The large display is being set up this year for the first time at the theater on Main Street.“It’s been part of their Christmas,” said Don Rasely, W.C.’s cousin and president of the Butler Penn Theater Community Trust. “This is their Christmas. You know how people have their traditions, well this is their tradition.”In past years, the display sprawled in the living room at the Butler house of W.C. and Mary Rasely. Most of the furniture had to be relocated.“There was just a little space to walk around it,” Mary recalled.W.C.’s grandson Justin Cobern, now 18, said he remembers going to his grandparents’ house on Main Street to help set up the display.“We’d usually start putting it up the Monday after Thanksgiving and sometimes go ’til Christmas Eve,” Justin recalled.That was until about five years ago.“My grandma broke her arm and we just kind of stopped doing it,” he said.Now the clickety-clack will be heard again, for the first time at the theater, starting Nov. 25. It will open just before the Spirit of Christmas Parade, according to Don Rasely, and have hours Sunday afternoons through New Year’s Day.Justin knows how to run the trains and will most likely be on hand as unofficial conductor whenever the display is open.“He loves to put stuff together,” said his grandmother. “He can take stuff apart and put it back together. He just has a knack for that.”Seven trains altogether will run around the rails this year, including the Lackawanna, Wabash, Santa Fe, Lionelville Rapid Transit and a trolley.

Staring at all the supplies for a while makes them look life-sized. The dozens of feet of track have rails held together with pins so they look continuous, the wooden railroad ties showing wear in some places.Overhead lights change from red to green, signaling for the trains to proceed.By the time each figure and fixture is placed, the layout will have a town park, airplane hanger, Army encampment, mountain scene, ice skating pond, gas station and tank trucks, manufacturing plant and a bank with a confrontation in progress between police and a masked robber.“You can make them so lifelike,” said Justin’s uncle, Jim Hook.“We used to use coffee grounds for the roads, but we didn’t know they were getting under the tracks and messing them up, so now we just use duct tape,” Justin said.“We basically do try to get the things set up the same every year,” he said. “The little houses may change.”They all come, appropriately, from Plasticville, the name of the company that makes them.“We put fencing in between the tracks, as if it’s real and people shouldn’t walk across the tracks,” Justin said.The fences help, too, if a toy train jumps its track. The elevated train once derailed around a turn and “took out a bunch of houses,” Justin recalled.Newer controls can be programmed to slow down at predetermined areas, Hook noted.“I’ll be down here watching,” Justin said, “because there’s no computer to control the speed of these.”Visitors during the holiday season won’t be able to come right up to the display, Don Rasely said. But they can stare for hours if they like; there won’t be any line pushing them along.“What’s nice is we have the seats here, so if grandparents bring their grandkids, they can sit down if they want to,” he pointed out.A newer Lionel Christmas train runs in a tight circle at the front of the stage. The finished product may also include two side setups. Christmas trees will be part of the final look as well.

Justin’s Uncle Jim caught the miniature railroad bug when he married into the family.“I think we all (in the family) have ones we set up at home,” he said. “I always was interested but then I met my wife and I saw Pap’s (W.C.’s) and I thought, ‘Wow! I have to have something like that.’ “He himself has four sets of trains plus a trolley on three tiers on a 4-foot by 8-foot board. “Eventually it will stay up permanently,” Hook said.That’s one of the secrets of continuing the tradition of a model train display.“Leave as much as possible put together. Store as much still together as you can,” Hook said.Leaving the display together is not an option at the grandparents’ house, where they needed their living room back for the rest of the year.“The boards come apart. There’s a rack built above the car in the garage, which is why we have to take all the track off,” Mary Rasely said. “Everything comes off the board. Everything comes apart.”To many, completely dismantling such an extensive setup every year might sound like a lot of work. “It is, but it made Christmas,” Mary Rasely said.Since some of the younger family members have never seen the display set up, resuming the tradition might make Christmas more special for them, too.Come the day after Thanksgiving, the trains will roll again, for anyone who wants to see.

<b>WHAT:</b> Holiday Train Display<b>WHEN:</b> Opening Nov. 25 before the Spirit of Christmas parade, and then from 3 to 5 p.m. Sundays Nov. 27 through Jan. 1.<b>WHERE:</b> Butler Penn Theater, 149-151 N. Main St.<b>ADMISSION:</b> $5 for adults, $4 for senior citizens, and $3 for children ages 16 and younger<b>INFORMATION:</b> 724-287-7366