Garden Spot Village Train Room (9/28/2019)

Saturday, September 28, 2019
We happened to receive a magazine for a former resident and in that magazine, Destinations, was an article about the Garden Spot Village Train Room, which was having an Open House today. We alerted Granite Farms Estates' own model train room expert, Walt H, and together we traveled the distance to Garden Spot Village, itself a CCRC, in New Holland, PA. It took us over an hour to reach the very large complex out in Pennsylvania Dutch country. We passed a couple horse-pulled buggies, and a large Amish family was also touring the model train room.

Kent and Walt enter the Village Square,
the Visitor Center of Garden Spot Village

As we made our way to the Train Room in the basement of the Gardens West wing, we passed the gift shop and coffee shop (which offers Starbucks products).

There was a small conservatory

A water cooler with a bottle-filling feature

A sort of real post office

Ah-ha, we must be nearing the train room!

Whoa! There were two very large model train layouts; this one is the O-gauge
layout, which had buttons to activate a car wash, drive-in movie theater, etc.

Display of Lionel trains through the ages

Several operators control the trains, here on the HO-gauge layout

HO-gauge locomotive roundhouse

Thomasville with Thomas the Tank Engine who verbally interacts
with children through the magic of audio-visual technology

A particularly long freight train winds along the model display

A "German village"

There is a "model train cam" with one of the locomotives
projecting a view as if from the engine cab

Plenty of bridges and tunnels

Also waterways

A small layout for the Dewitt Clinton
locomotive-pulled train

The many members of this communities' Train Club have helped others in Lancaster County either remove old train layouts, or one time, to establish a new layout. Unfortunately, we at Granite Farms Estates are too small and too far away to benefit from the expertise and manpower of the Garden Spot Village Train Club. Through e-mail, they will dispense advice and encouragement.