Honey, I shrunk Tacoma, Union Station and the kids
If the people waiting for a train inside Tacoma’s Union Station had looked up from their newspapers and books on Thursday they would have seen a gigantic human eyeball looking back at them.
The eyeball was real, they weren’t.
The people are residents of a Tacoma and Pierce County that have been shrunk to 1:87 scale for a model railroad display inside the Washington State History Museum.
The display isn’t new — it opened when the museum did in 1996. What is novel is Union Station — recently completed by Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineers member Gail Hendrickson. It was unveiled Thursday night at the opening of the museum’s Annual Model Train Festival.
At least six other model railroad displays are set up around the museum for the show which runs through New Year’s Day.
“We have trains of all different sizes and scales,” said Marshall Wilson, the club’s chief engineer.
Union Station was painstakingly reproduced down to the smallest railing and windowpane. Copper shields on the salad bowl-sized domed roof look like the real ones, only much smaller. One half-inch tall passengers unload luggage from cars.
“It’s definitely a masterpiece,” said Engineers president Steve Carter. “Nobody has built anything comparable to this in my experience with model railroading.”
Union Station joins other landmarks in the 1,700-square-foot display such as the Brown & Haley candy factory, Ruston smelter, Top of the Ocean restaurant, Meeker Mansion and others that existed in the 1950s.
For years a cardboard mock-up of the station stood in for the under construction model.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Wilson said.
Marshall went from a child enthralled with the family train set to a man responsible for a computerized display inside the museum that has 2,800 feet of track, 500 freight cars, 125 locomotives and 50 passenger cars.
The display is more than just track and trains. Trestles cross green rivers, complete with bathers and fishermen. Ambulance attendants carry a stretcher to a car wreck while red lights flash on a police car. A roundhouse and turntable hold several locomotives. A lone man rides an empty freight car.
It’s the largest public layout in Washington, and it’s full of history. Historic lines — Union Pacific, Milwaukee Road, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific — still haul cargo and passengers through tunnels and over passes.
Now with Union Station installed front and center in the 22-year-old display, the club doesn’t have plans to add any more big models.
“This is pretty much the crowning jewel,” Carter said.
This story was originally published December 21, 2018 at 9:50 AM.
