Model train display provides joy, pays homage to area
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - A train passes the Beaver Brook breaker replica at a train display at the Shenandoah Ambulance building.
SHENANDOAH – The Shenandoah Rag Co., Ice House, Beaver Brook breaker, and Brandonville Speedway.
All of these former area landmarks are features of a model train display this winter at the Shenandoah Community Ambulance building on North Main Street.
Tom Rentschler, an emergency medical technician for the ambulance, devises the display each year.
“The older I got, I got into trains more and more, but I had no place to really set them up,” Rentschler said. “Three years ago, we set a small one up and everybody kept asking how many trains do you have. I said quite a bit, but I have no room to really set them up.”
That’s when, he said, the ambulance offered up a space for the display.
An open house was held on Black Friday to allow attendees of the Christmas events downtown to see the display.
“I guess it was a pretty good hit. There was maybe over a hundred people came here and they talked about having another one,” Rentschler said. “It’s here. It’s here for the public. It’s not for me. I’m just thankful that the ambulance supports it.”
“The adults like the trains just as much as the kids,” he added.
He said fellow ambulance employees helped put the display together.
There are several local touches to the display, including the various landmarks mentioned earlier.
The breaker, he said, was hand-built.
Another notable inclusion is the former Brandonville Speedway.
“My dad raced there,” Rentschler said.
The speedway build — replicating the former racetrack which was demolished for the failed Brandonville Industrial Park — also includes a nod to Tex Christian, a former local driver who owned the Pennsylvania Speed and Sport shop in town.
“I did this as a memory of him and the little town of Brandonville,” he said.
Christian raced in the 1950s at Brandonville, Mount Carbon, and Evergreen, among others, and was named the most popular driver in the region in 1958 by the Hazleton Plain Speaker.
Another open house was held Saturday from 3pm to 5pm.
The display will also be open to the public from 6:30pm to 8pm Tuesday. Visitors are asked to enter through the front door on Main Street.
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