A car makes its way around Steve Moylan’s model railroad, which the retired police officer showcases in the basement of his home in November.
Resident and former township police officer Steve Moylan will invite people into his home to view his model railroad community this Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 9.
Called Garden City, the railroad is modeled after an Eastern Pennsylvania community in the 1950s, with multiple trains based on real steam and diesel engines. It covers almost all of Moylan’s basement at 835 Vermont Ave. and features locales named after Deptford landmarks.
Moylan has named himself the model community’s “mayor” and has showcased the township’s history with First and Finest balloons that emphasize Deptford’s aviation past. Controls affecting lights and buildings adorn the platforms and a screen showcases the trains moving through the makeshift-community.
Moylan has loved trains since he was a child, when the Philadelphia native boarded a real one with an engineer.
“I was maybe 8 years old when my parents took me to Reading Terminal, when it was a real train terminal,” Moylan recalled. “All these trains are sitting there, and my dad says, ‘See that train sitting there? That’s the one we’re going to get on.
“There’s a little compartment up front,'” Moylan’s father said. “We’re going to get on the first car, because there’s a little compartment where the engineer’s going to be. He’s not there yet, but if you hang around and you’re cute enough, maybe you’ll get invited in.'”
Moylan’s parents soon gave their son the first of his many model trains. He started his current model railroad shortly after retiring from the township police department in 2000. Smaller models made over the years would eventually be combined to form Garden City, a project that took Moylan 10 years to complete.
There is no charge to view Moylan’s model railroad, one of many across New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware that are showcased every November by a group Moylan belongs to called Model Railroad Open Houses.
“”It’s to promote the hobby,” noted said Moylan, who will display his railroad from noon to 5 p.m. “It’s not to make money – and we won’t take any money.”
