This story originally appeared in the December 2025 issue of Town&Gown magazine.
How many of us found something we loved as a young child that we still thoroughly enjoy as an adult? Members of the Penn State Model Railroad Club have.
“I was just 2 years old,” says club President Adam Navarra. “My grandfather sat me down in front of a loop of track in his living room, and I was changed for the rest of my life.”
“I was a little older [than 2] when my dad trusted me to play with his trains, and I wouldn’t stop playing with them,” Treasurer Julian Grimes recalls. “He would take me to model railroading stores, pick out a train with me, and we ended up building a full-sized table in my basement.”
“My grandfather worked for the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad and for Union Switch and Signal,” says Steven Walter, engagement/media chair. “When I was a little kid, my mom and dad would take me on picnics to go watch trains.”
The club meets twice weekly during the semester, Mondays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Typically, 20 to 25 members gather in Research Unit A at the corner of Hastings Road and University Drive to pursue their passion of putting trains on carefully laid tracks that wind through club-member-created landscapes of trees and towns.
The club always has three layouts. One is HO scale, 1/87th the size of actual trains; another N scale, 1:160; and the third Z scale, 1:220. These layouts are intricate, built using the skills of club members.
“Everybody finds their niche,” says Navarra.
Walter is the painter, making the rail cars look as realistic as possible.
“[I’m] adding rust to them or graffiti or adding dirt and grime to them through airbrushing, paint brushing, or using different types of weathering powders,” Walter, a graphic design major, notes in describing his weekly labor of love.
Grimes, a computer science major, handles the engines’ inner workings.
“I work on the electronics,” he says. “Building and repairing locomotives, that’s all I do. I upgrade them so they have better computer components.”
These aren’t your grandad’s model trains.
Another member works on the scenery. Navarra, a photography major, takes photos and turns them over to Walter, who makes signs, such as the University Park Eastern logos that adorn the model trains.
Some club members gain practical knowledge in their area of study, including electrical and civil engineering, landscape architecture, and design. In this way, the club provides not only a fun time with like-minded train lovers, but a way to enhance career skills. This is something the club hopes will attract new members at Penn State’s involvement fairs, where students are introduced to various clubs.
“We will ask them, ‘What is your major?’ and try to tie it into something we do,” Navarra says. “Nine times out of 10, we can tie it in somehow to the student’s major.”
The club is open to any full- or part-time graduate or undergraduate Penn State student. Membership dues are $30 per academic year or $15 per semester. The club gets $10,000 a year from Penn State, half of which buys paint, lumber, trains, and other equipment. The rest goes to costs such as travel to other clubs nearby, and to ride on actual rail lines, such as the Strasburg Rail Road in Lancaster County. Last year the club chartered a private trip on the Bellefonte Central Line.
While many club members were hooked as young kids and have kept that love into early adulthood, the club itself has endured for 70 years, including tearing down and rebuilding the layouts through five different moves. Just how has this club survived and thrived since the days of black-and-white TV?
“It has to be the dedication of the people,” Grives believes. “It started out as just a group of people that loves to play with trains, then went through building permanent layouts and seeing the smiles of everyone who enjoys it.”
“It’s the dedication that we in this type of hobby have,” agrees Walter. “This isn’t quick and easy. It’s a long building process that takes all our different contributions and creates our own little world.”
“There’s a sense of community,” Navarra believes. “The club is not small but not too big, and we all feel really connected.”
The club will show off this sense of community and the world of railroading it has built at its next open house Dec. 6 and 7 (see info box). The last open house drew more than 350 visitors. Club members invite the public, and especially Penn State students, to come and see their world in miniature and, just maybe, start a lifelong love of trains. T&G
Ron Ruman is a freelance writer, Centre County native, and Penn State grad who lives in York.
Penn State Model Railroad Club Open House
Saturday & Sunday, Dec. 6-7
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day
Research Unit A, Hastings Road & University Drive, University Park Campus
Admission is free
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