2022: Small Town USA

There are many historic photographs of small rural towns and villages, from the late 1800s through the 1950s. At the beginning of the 20th century, most Americans still lived on the land, and in rural communities.

Small towns grew up to meet the needs of the surrounding area. In this way, each town and its environs were self-sufficient. Each had a general store, a hardware store, a livery and one or more churches. If someone needed something that couldn’t be purchased locally, they could go to a larger town, or shop from a mail order catalog.

The largest of these mail order outfits were Sears and Roebuck, and Montgomery (monkey) Wards, where you could buy everything from farm implements to household goods, to clothing and shoes, and much, much more.

Using hand crafted, vintage buildings from N scale model train setups, we have attempted to create our version of small-town America. Parts are harvested from an old time 1940’s/50’s train village, that were in poor condition when acquired. Many of the buildings required reconstruction, and paint touch up, and the skill to work with detail and painstaking precision.

Strategizing about the configuration of the town, the placement of the downtown area, residential areas, farming, and industry, was both fun and challenging. Creating a topography with various hills and dales, using a variety of surface materials required thought and planning, to create visual, and textural interest. We hope you enjoy the display we created. And perhaps you will think about how you might create an alternate version of our “small town” that might better serve the town’s population.

SEE THE PROCESS FOR CREATING OUR EXHIBIT