HISTORY

The club was originally formed in February of 1985 when a Lehighton hobby shop owner took some names of persons interested in forming a club.

Around the same time, the Pocono Museum Unlimited in Lehighton was in its planning stages. The club was invited to help. After a short time it was realized that the goals of the two organizations would preclude them from working to a common end.  Although several operating displays were started by both organizations the club decided to leave and start out on their own. At that point, around 1990, not having anywhere else to go the club started meeting at the Mack residence where it began planning a module (portable) display to be taken out into the shopping malls or where ever they would be invited. The club started looking for a new and permanent home.

With real estate as valuable as it is, it would not be easy to find something that a small group could afford. So we continued to look and raise money and build membership and assets. As we began to outgrow the Mack residence and needed a public building to use as a work shop/meeting area we found space in Bowmanstown in the lower level of Pappy’s Corner Store. We knew that even this move would be temporary since it would not fulfill our long-term goals of providing a place to build a club house platform.

In April of 2002, two more years, we worked out a deal to buy the abandoned Sacred Heart Chapel, also in Bowmanstown, from a contractor who had bought it and the adjacent properties from the Catholic Church. The group immediately saw the potential to build a second floor in the building and double its size. On the main floor a Ho scale operating display is presently being built and the second floor is used as meeting, work shop and storage area. The club now resides at 529 Ore Street, Bowmanstown, Pa.