Miniature Railroad & Village^®

Overview

Take a walking tour of western Pennsylvania at the world-renowned Miniature Railroad & Village^®.

This beloved exhibit's story began in 1919 with a man named Charles Bowdish of Brookville, Pa. Originally a holiday display on the second floor of his house, it moved to the Buhl Planetarium in 1954, and ultimately found its final home at Carnegie Science Center in 1992.

The Miniature Railroad & Village^® features hundreds of wonderfully realistic animated scenes that illustrate how people lived, worked, and played in our region during an era spanning the 1880s to the late 1930s.

NEW! Cement City

The new historic installation for 2018 is Cement City, a historic neighborhood in Donora, Pennsylvania. A collection of seven houses – six completed and one under construction – line the hillside near the exhibit’s model of the original Allegheny Observatory. The addition to the exhibit, which features a block party scene, represents one of Thomas Edison’s fascinating engineering feats that still stands today.

More favorites include the Primanti Bros. restaurant in the Strip District, Westinghouse Atom Smasher, Crawford Grill, Fallingwater, Forbes Field, Punxsutawney Phil at Gobbler's Knob, Luna Park, Sharon Steel Mill, Manchester Farms, and a historic Pittsburgh incline, to name a few.

By the Numbers

The Miniature Railroad & Village^® features:

• 105 animations
• 250,000+trees
• 14 aircraft
• 85 automobiles
• 1 Incline (Monongahela Incline)
• 60 trucks
• 22 horse-drawn vehicles
• 23,000 fans in Forbes Field