By Matt Schickling
Wire Staff Writer
They managed to build a city in the basement.
“As soon as this one passes,” Charles Long said, following a model steam engine with a wagging finger, “this one starts up.”
A small model SEPTA trolley rattled and sped along a miniature track, beneath a model bridge, in front of a model factory to arrive at a model terminal, where tiny plastic figures of people were waiting. The scene is one of many housed by the Abington Lines Model Railroad Club, located in the bottom floor of a small building in Richboro.
The track winds around the room and fills most of the unoccupied space, leaving an aisle for spectators to walk by and marvel at the small civilization the club has created. There’s a circus, a waterfront area with railcar ferries, an industrial district, a business district, a small town, rural landscapes and a city complete with its own grocery store, Chinese restaurant, post office, barber shop, pharmacy, tavern, used car lot and more.
“We try to continually change and upgrade,” Long said.
The location in itself is an upgrade compared to its past. Abington Lines was started in 1964 by Abington High School students and some adult supervisors from the Greater Abington Township Society of Model Engineers Club. Originally, the club met in members’ homes, but in 1968, it settled into the basement of Hatboro Bowling Alley, which was located on Jacksonville Road in Hatboro.
The club leased the basement of 884 Second Street Pike in Richboro after the bowling alley was sold in 1974, but kept the name of the group intact. Eleven years later, the club purchased the former Chain Bridge Inn on 2066 Second Street Pike, where it set up headquarters and developed a new layout.
Owning the space allows them security, as they’ve seen many other clubs dissolve due to problems with finding property or maintaining a lease.
“You lose a lease in a place like this, you lose everything,” Norma Toll, a club member from Huntingdon Valley, said. The layout of the display is built and wired for the room. It would be impossible to salvage the design if the club had to move. But, as owners, they won’t have to.
By trade, Toll is a psychiatrist, but in the club, she builds scenes. Inside each building are people and realistic designs. For example, in the pharmacy along the trolley tracks, she built magazine racks, a counter and display cases. In the restaurant, there are tables with checkered cloths, servers and glasses.
“I look around the Internet and see what I can find,” she said. “There’s a huge attention to detail.”
She’s speaking of her own work and the work of others. Another member, Bob Ludka, is a retired locomotive engineer. He designs and builds the railroad signals, modeled after those he saw every day working for the Reading Company, Conrail and CSX through the years.
“They aren’t perfect, but they’re close,” Ludka said.
Many other members are skilled in certain trades. There are electricians who maintain the switchboards and wire the rails, crafters who paint or build trains and others who have just taken on model trains as a hobby.
“We have people from all walks of life,” Larry Steen, of Yardley, said. “It’s hard to find these clubs.”
And that means it’s hard to find a display as impressive as theirs. It exceeds 1,000 feet in length, with two train lines in each direction and a trolley line that circles through the town. In the rural areas, there are animals and farm equipment. In the urban section, there are police cars and tall buildings. Each area is uniquely crafted to give the scene realistic quality.
The club is holding open houses on select weekends through February to show what the members have built.
“We don’t charge for shows, we just ask for donations,” Toll said. “We use them to continue to build each year.”
The Abington Lines Model Railroad Club is holding open houses from noon to 4 p.m. on Dec. 6–7, 13–14, 27–28, Jan. 3–4, 10–11 and Feb. 7–8, 14–15 at its location at 2066 Second Street Pike in Richboro. For more information, call 215–598–7720 or visit www.abingtonlines.org.
