Model trains on display at Poway museum

By Emily Sorensen

The Poway Historical and Memorial Society is presenting a new model train exhibit at the Heritage Museum, located in Old Poway Park.

On loan from the Poway Station All Scale Model Railroad Club, a group of modular model train enthusiasts, who also assembled the models and set up the displays, the trains include steam engines, diesel engines and electric engines. Each model has an information sheet, giving details on the model, the real-life counterpart train, and which club member built it.

The trains will remain on exhibit until Saturday, April 21, after which Poway Station will set them up to run in Templar’s Hall to celebrate the Train Song Festival, which takes place Saturday, April 28.

The model train exhibit is just one of the many guest exhibits the Poway Historical Society has hosted, alongside the permanent features in the museum. This past Christmas, the museum played host to Poway resident Merrilee Boyack’s enormous collection of nativity sets from around the world.

The museum’s permanent exhibits including documents and photographs, small models of original Poway buildings, old toys, clothes and a full-scale set up of an old schoolroom, using original furniture and accessories. The museum also sells prints of old photographs, as well as postcards with photographs of Poway both old and new.

The Heritage Museum was started in the early 1990s, but interest in a museum on Poway’s history reaches back as far as 1961, when it was initially begun as an adjunct to Dearborn Cemetery.

“We’re trying to preserve the history of Poway,” said Jeffrey Frye, president of the Poway Historical Society.

Though a small operation run by volunteers, the Historical Society is working hard to get their archives up to proper archival standards, thanks to some help from the City of Poway, who have funded the project. Frye said the society was working to move all documents and photographs into acid-free slipcovers that would protect them from damage.

The Historical Society is also working to make it easier to research Poway’s history by loading their records and research onto archival software, which can them be accessed on the museum’s computer.

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Posted by Emily Sorensen on Feb 28 2012. Filed under Local News, Poway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry