What is the Great Train set?

Hearing that a new train exhibit has opened up is always a nice treat, and today I wanna go over one that opened up fairly recently at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. 

About the display

Photo curtesy of Liberty Science Center 

Located on the 3rd floor, the Great Train Set displays the 1950's on the Lackawanna Railroad. The display shows trains traveling from the Hoboken Terminal to small scenic towns in New Jersey, with a hint of coal country in Eastern PA. 

John H. Scully is the creator of this layout, and all of the scenery from the display comes from his memories as a kid in New Jersey. It can't be stated enough how detailed the layout is. Alongside 425 feet of track is 400 little people, realistic bodies of water including a lake Scully would go to with his family during the summer, a drive in movie theater, and a grocery store. 

The thing I like most about this layout is the fact that while it does capture a time and place and turns in into a miniature display, it also captures someone's memories of a time and place. Looking at this layout you're seeing what Scully saw when he was a kid growing up in the 1950's. 

Photo curtsy of the Liberty Science Center 

Other train layouts out there do try to capture a certain time period and turn it into a miniature, but this one has a personal touch to it. 

Scully and his wife wanted to move the display to a public place to be seen by many, and while there was some interest from the Smithsonian, Scully wanted the display to be in New Jersey. Luckily for him, the Liberty Science Center was more then happy to take the display in for him. 

Photo curtsy of NJ.com 

Outside of the train display, the Liberty Science Center is also home to the largest planetarium in America, and has other exhibits and shows such as Boom time, a show that shows off controlled explosions, Making Mammoths, and Universe Revealed, a exhibit about the James Webb Space Telescope and how it shows us parts of the universe we'd never thought we'd see. 

For more information about the Liberty Science Center, click here