Wendys Classic Corner Wendys Classic Corner Hi, this is Wendy from Wendy's Classic Corner.

And today we are in the beautiful Gibsonia PA at the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum.

Have you heard of this historically inspired model railroad?

The museum is only open for a limited time.

So let's punch our tickets.

Climb aboard and check it out.

So we're here today with Ray.

Ray.

What do you do here at the Western Pennsylvania Model Railroad Museum?

I am the president of the Model Railroad Museum.

And we are building a 4000 square foot HL lab model in Pittsburgh, Cumberland, Maryland, back in 1953.

And that's awesome.

And you're only open certain times of the year.

You're coming up for an opening.

When when is your opening to our opening day this year or Saturday, November 9th, and we run weekends through January 12th.

And what time of the day?

What's the, Friday evenings We're here 6 through 9, Saturday and Sundays, 11 to 5.

And the weekend between Christmas and New Year's will be open every day, 11 to 5.

Now, I imagine you get a lot of kids that come to this thing, and we're sort of in the kids area.

What can kids do when they come to the museum?

Yeah, the the downstairs level here is geared for kids.

We have 2 or 3 braille boards that they can play with.

Trains.

There's some push buttons on the, and scale and a Lionel that they can run trains.

So this is all geared for kids to play with trains down here.

Yeah.

And we're kind of standing in front of one of the train, things where kids can play and they can run these trains.

Particular trains here.

Yeah.

This is a Lionel display.

And the kids, there's push buttons all all the way around the layout that they can push buttons.

The train will make one loop around and then stop, and then they can push it again.

And there's little things they can find on the track.

Right.

We got pictures of stuff that they can hunt on for and try to find.

Right.

Yeah.

And then we have a lot more cool stuff upstairs.

That's where the big fancy train destroyers.

And we're going to go check that out next.

There's they can't play with trains upstairs.

That's just all for viewing.

But yeah it's 4000 square foot.

All right, let's go check it out.

Okay.

Cool.

You.

So.

Right.

We're upstairs now.

And can you tell us a little bit about this model railroad up here?

What year is this supposed to represent?

This is represent in 1953.

And you're going from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland.

And how is this crafted?

Well, our members built all these buildings because you can't go to hobby shops and find these buildings because this is identical to what Pittsburgh was back in 1953.

Yeah.

This is amazing.

And you brought us in this particular space for a reason.

You want to tell us something about this bridge?

This is the Smithfield Street Bridge.

And back in 1953, the Smithfield Street Bridge was half streetcars and half automobiles.

So we're the only place in the Burg that still has streetcars running on the Smithfield Street Bridge.

Yeah, there's one right there.

Right.

All right.

Great.

Let's go check some more stuff out.

Okay.

So right we've come a little bit further down the line.

Now, there's something you want to show us right here.

Can you tell us what it is?

This is the Glenwood Yard.

And back in 1953, the railroads did not have refrigerated cars, so they called their cars with blocks of ice Great Thats the ice platform is there And they say to people, loading the ice ended in the refrigerated cars.

Oh, that's so interesting.

Yeah, I do see them putting the little blocks of ice into the cars.

Oh, I never knew that.

Well, I think you have a lot more interesting things to tell on the line.

Let's just keep going down the line.

Right.

All right.

So, Ray, you've brought us into the dispatch room.

This is the dispatch office.

The gentleman who has control of all the trains that are running on the railroad.

All the green spots that you see are all trains that are running.

You'll see them moving from one spot to the next.

That's, just moving around the room, up.

And he controls the whole train, so he controls the whole set up.

He controls the speed he controls on whether they're starting or stopping.

And he controls everything from in here.

And some of these gray things are the stations, then the different stations, the gray, train that left that block.

Okay.

This is all set up on the block system.

Okay.

So when I leave one block to the next, there's a gray behind it, and eventually it will disappear.

And do they ever like the train just smash into each other?

Oh, every once in a while, we're like the real railroads and have our accidents.

Yes, but you told me, I think that this computer tends to prevent them from running into it.

Well, most of the time, yes, but we do have our accidents, okay?

We want to make it look like it's a realism.

Yes.

You know.

Yeah.

So this is very interesting.

So thank you for showing this to us.

And I guess we'll get back to the railroad.

Railroad.

Right.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Okay.

All right.

All right, Ray, you've got some interesting stuff to show us over here.

What do we got over here?

We're in Dickerson run yard right now, and, mainly we're looking at the Boy Scouts that are exploring the cave over there on the hillside and all these little trees.

You make all of these?

All the trees are made by our members?

Yes.

And they're made whole.

There's there's a kid out there that, has the armatures on it, and we put poly fiber on top of them and, hairspray and sprinkle the green covering on them.

Wow.

That's very interesting.

Well, let's let's go check out the next section.

All right.

All right.

On our way down.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

So, Ray, there's a little picnic going on over here.

Can you tell us a little bit about this?

Yeah, we're in Connersville, and the church is having their picnic.

You can see people throughout the grass having their picnic.

There's sunbathers on the rocks in the river swimming down river, and there's canoes in the river.

So they're having their good old picnic.

That's really cool.

All the little.

What about these cars?

You make these as well.

These are the cars that you buy.

You buy.

Okay, look, they're all like I say, this layout is 1953, so we cannot have cars on here that's older than 1953.

Wow.

So it's a little sometimes it gets a little tricky trying to find an older car, I can imagine.

All right, well, let's go check out the next thing you have for us.

Next thing we're moving, I think, to Ohiopyle.

Next.

Let's let's go check out the Ohiopyle.

Okay.

All right, so we're here at Ohio What do you want to tell us about Ohiopyle here?

Back in 1953, there was a little village of Ohiopyle right now, this today it's a state park.

Yeah.

But our main thing is you always heard somebody going over the falls in their canoe.

So there he is right there.

Oh, that's a little minimalist canoe.

Went over the falls.

Oh that's amazing.

All right.

Anything else you want to tell us about this other night?

There's nothing really going on in Ohiop And we're going to see something about you I think.

Now.

Yeah, I think so.

All right, let's go check it out.

All right.

Ray.

So I think there's something special on here regarding you.

Well, what what do we got here Were in Barnesville.

Okay.

First our building layout.

We was building the tunnel portals.

We wanted to see what size they were.

So while I was standing in front of the portal and they were taken my picture and measure in a tunnel.

So one of our members cut me out of the picture and led me on the layout.

So you're actually on this.

You're actually on the rail?

Well, actually on the railroad from 1953.

Right.

All right.

And then you said, you said there's a bear.

There's a bear walking across a little rock formation area.

I think he's coming after me.

Oh, no.

And another cool thing about this place Ray is that you have all these different lights, and you can turn the lights to different.

So it's more like evening at night, right?

Yeah.

Every, every so often the lights will dimmed on and it'll turn into a night scene.

You'll see all the horses up and, they'll go back up, I think every 20 minutes.

Okay.

Awesome.

So hopefully we'll get to see that.

And let's go on to our next section down the line.

All right.

We're on the way.

All right.

All right, Ray, so you brought us over here to check out something really unique.

What do we got here?

Or in Mars day?

All right.

Now, and right beside this manufacturing plant, we have a burn barrel that one of our members designed, a flickering burn barrel.

How did they go about designing that?

He's electronic wizard.

So whatever he did to get it to flicker and everything, it looks like something.

They're burning something inside that barrel.

It does look like that.

You just.

There's so many unique, interesting things.

How many members work on this?

Upstairs here, we have probably a total of 25.

Wow.

That will come out on on a Thursday night and work on the layout.

And these people are all volunteer.

Yes.

Everybody here is volunteers.

No paid employees here.

All right, all right.

So we have another section to go down and we still got more to go down the line.

Yes we do.

We're going to couple more stops.

All right.

Let's go check them out okay.

You can see all of this.

This is the side of this.

This is building has four sections left right left upper left right upper.

And I had to move them all together and then put the windows in.

Yeah.

Good, good can't put your fingers just everywhere.

Yeah.

They really give.

Thank you.

All right, Ray.

So we've come a little bit further down the line.

And what do we have here to see?

We're at Brush Tunnel, which leads up into Allegheny Station.

But a little scene.

What we have here is a poor hobo sitting on a log, taking a dump.

And behind him comes a big black bear.

Oh no, that's not what you want to have happening.

You don't want to see that.

Oh, dear.

Well, we're actually coming towards the end of our, our, our the train tracks right where our leading down into Cumberland, Maryland, which was our last stop.

All right, let's go to there.

Okay.

Okay, Ray, we've reached the end of the line in Cumberland.

What do we have going on here in Cumberland, Maryland?

We've got a little problem here.

Some boys ask out on fire.

Oh, no.

So the Cumberland Fire Department is here pointing to that.

All right.

And what else is going on in there right now?

We have a guy sitting up on the railing on the bridge.

He's sitting watching a fireman do their job.

And on the street we have a bunch of sunbathers sitting on the back porch.

I could care less if there was a fire or not.

There's sunbathing.

And this these, backdrops, they're all hand-painted.

Correct.

The buildings on the backdrop?

Yes.

One of our members and drew it all on there.

And then they came back and they painted everything in.

Well that's amazing.

This is a really, really cool museum.

And so tell us, how can people find you?

How can they get in touch with you?

You have a website or we have a website wpmrm.org.

Okay.

You can find us on our website.

And like we said before, we're open Friday evening, 6 to 9 Saturday and Sundays 11 to 5.

Yeah.

So people got to get out here while they can.

Right.

Because we're only open 31 days as well this year, 32 days out of the whole year.

Okay.

Well everybody got to get down here.

And thank you so much Ray, for allowing us to come out and shoot.

We really appreciate your time.

Thank you for coming up.

Yeah, we appreciate it.