In a hard-to-find alley of Hazleton you can step inside a former bakery and look at downtown Jim Thorpe. Ask what happened to Hazleton, and someone might say “It’s upstairs.”

They don’t mean there’s a flight of steps to the roof. Hazleton, so to speak, is around the bend and up the ramp.

There it sits, its architectural gems still intact: the old YMCA building with those sweeping arched windows and the epic train station with dormers, gables and awnings galore.

All in 1:87 scale.

I’ve visited the Anthracite Model Railroad Club’s bi-level HO train layout periodically for about as long as they’ve held open house at the location off 22nd Street on Hanover Court. The evolution has been spectacular; the dedication to detail engaging.

The layout snakes around like two mirrored S-shapes nested one on top the other. It depicts our region – primarily Hazleton, Weatherly and Jim Thorpe – circa 1940s, which, as the group’s Web site ( www.armsclub.org) notes, allows them to realistically mix steam and diesel.

So there are “cab-unit” diesel engines, my favorites ever since childhood days running our family O-gauge Santa Fe, sporting the famous red and yellow “War Bonnet” paint work.

But you might also catch a 4-8-8-4 “Big Boy” steamer, akin to the one you can view in real life at Steamtown in Scranton. There was also a streamlined passenger engine with fins on the back car reminiscent of a 1950s auto, and an idle Shay-style (gear-drive) loco, near a logging operation.

During my trip one youngster spotted Thomas the Tank Engine, and his buddy Emily, visiting from Sodor Island, one assumes.

The real secret is in the details

But it is the towns that make this layout unique, and it is the scale recreation of distinctive local buildings that make the towns so compelling.

If you’re not a model-railroader (I’ve only been a dabbler), you may not appreciate the willpower and patience it can take to model a prototype “from scratch.”

Think of baking a cake. Most people open a box, add water and maybe an egg, and have batter. Others mix their own flower, sugar, eggs and flavorings and consider the cake “from scratch.”

For rabid model railroaders, “from scratch” is more like growing and grinding the wheat yourself, raising chickens for the eggs, and milking the cow by hand (and churning the cream).

The miniature of the Hazleton train station – the real one was foolishly sacrificed on the altar of modernity – is striking. But there’s much more.

Not only does Jim Thorpe boast its still-extant train station and both Packer mansions, there’s also a scale recreation of the lost Hotel Wahnetah near Glen Onoko falls. And a model of the Lehigh River locks in action, built to make the rapids navigable (remnants exist in real life).

The steep hill out of Weatherly climbs past the foundry that made the town. Eckley is preserved with more love than Harrisburg provided when it cut funding for the state museum.

There are coal breakers at Drifton and Jeddo, a man bathing outdoors in metal tub, and two gents playing checkers on a barrel (minutiae drive many modelers). There’s a bit of the Bethlehem Steel plant, a tiny echo of a lost giant.

You can watch children grin as a steamer enters the roundhouse, and elders grin at lost landmarks.

Individually, these custom-built reminders of a faded era captivate. Collectively, they capture the sweep of our area’s industrial history on a scale anyone can grasp.

About the Author

Mark Guydish covers education for the Times Leader. Reach him at (570) 970-7161 or mguydish@timesleader.com.

A West Hazleton native, I worked as a service technician repairing electronic mailing and shipping systems, a bike shop owner and an Emergency Medical Technician (among other jobs) before landing a reporter job at the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau in 1995. I started by covering primarily politics in Hazleton City and outlying municipalities, eventually became "social issues" team leader in the Wilkes-Barre office with the accent on education, and headed the Hazleton Bureau for a spell before returning to full-time reporting, my preferred position. I'm an avid cyclist and rode across the country in 1990, a trip of more than 5,000 miles from New Jersey to Seattle and down the coast to San Francisco. Years in the Boy Scouts made me a life long backpacker and camper, and I've yet to find a better way to enjoy the quiet lure of winter snow than cross country skiing.

Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.

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