By Ted Bordelon
Wire Managing Editor
There are few traditions that have stood the test of time and remained staples of the holiday season as the model train.
This year, Abington Lines Model Railroad Club will celebrate the season with its annual open houses, which allow visitors to experience the more than 1,000 feet of HO scale railroad track that snakes through miniature mountains, towns, cities and even a circus.
“I’ve done this all my life as a hobby,” David Wright, the president of the club, said. “When I was a kid, I just really enjoyed them and when my kids came along I got back into it.”
The Newtown resident heads the club, which has 28 active members, and helps to coordinate its layout, such as the track placement and to-scale towns.
The clubs members work to improve the layout at each of their weekly meetings, which take place on Tuesdays. For the past several months, the meetings have been devoted to improving the layout’s trolley operation and adding operational trackside signs.
The club is currently based in Richboro, on Second Street Pike, however its namesake town, Abington, plays into its storied history.
The club began as the Abington Model Railroad club in 1964, and consisted largely of Abington High School students and a handful of adult supervisors. The club soon evolved, however, into a group of adult model railroaders.
The group met in the houses of various members, but eventually moved into a fixed location in the basement of Hatboro Bowling Alley on Jacksonville Road in Hatboro.
It was here that the club built its first large permanent layout.
The group was renamed Abington Lines Model Railroad Club in 1968, and began holding open houses that same year around the holiday season.
When the bowling alley changed ownership in 1974, the club found a location on Second Street Pike to set up a permanent layout, again in the basement of a building.
By 1985, however, the club couldn’t reach an agreement with its landlord and held its final open house at that location, with more than 3,200 people attending the open houses.
Club members searched for another location, including SEPTA stations, but none that were affordable could be found until the purchase of the former “Chain Bridge Inn” in Richboro and the incorporation of the club as a nonprofit organization.
By 1989, the basic design of the club’s third layout was constructed and has been maintained at the club’s headquarters ever since.
“We have some families whose kids are really into trains who come out every weekend,” Wright said of the club’s open houses, which run from December through February. “It’s a great family outing.”
Abington Lines Model Railroad Club is located at 2066 Second Street Pike in Richboro. For information, call 215–598–7720. The open houses are scheduled from noon to 4 p.m. on the following Saturdays and Sundays: Dec. 7 and 8, Dec. 14 and 15, Dec. 28 and 29, Jan. 4 and 5, Jan. 11 and 12, Feb. 1 and 2 and Feb. 8 and 9.
