The Station at Citigroup Center

Follow these signs to the trains.	Citigroup Center Atrium 53 St. and Lexington Ave. New York, NY   Operational Dates for 2007: November 23, 2007 to December 28. 2007 Time of Operation: 10:00 A.M. through 6:00 PM Monday to Saturday Noon to 5:00 P.M. Sunday Closed:  Christmas Day	To get directions click on the map

A Guided Tour of the Station at Citigroup Center

The Layout at a Glance Name: The Station at Citigroup Center, New York City, NY. Scale: O, S, HO Size: 750 sq. ft. Layout Style: Multi-scale Public Display Layout enclosed in a Victorian station building. Prototype: NYC, PRR. NYO&W, B&O, C&O, B&M, Various Locale: New York State Era: 1945 - 1955 Length of mainline run: 4 @ 120' plus back-and-forth tracks and dispatch systems. Construction: Theatrical style platforms  Scenery: Carved Styrofoam scenery / scratchbuilt and kitbashed buildings / resin water.  Built to break down and travel. Backdrops: Professionally painted profile clouds / Electrified Plexiglas building profiles.  Day-to-night lighting system. Control: Fully automated signal and control systems / in-track sensor controls.  Cost: $750.000.00

The current edition of THE STATION AT CITIGROUP CENTER made its debut during the 1996 Holiday season as the Station at Citicorp Center. Like its predecessor, Citibank Station, it features a Victorian station building, this time with a clock tower with clocks on all four sides topped by a locomotive weathervane. The exhibit is surrounded by Victorian themed decorative fences topped with seven lighted Christmas Trees and ending in a forty foot long Victorian cutout train.

The Station  is the brainchild of Tony Award nominated Broadway scenic designer, Clarke Dunham, himself an avid model railroader. He sees in the exhibit an opportunity for folks to experience the nostalgia of a bygone era and to give them the chance to view that experience through a child's eyes, as he exper-ienced Railroads on Parade  and its model railroads at the 1939 New York Worlds' Fair as a three year old child.  Together with his artist wife, Barbara, the Dunhams recruited over fifty artists and craftspeople to bring this amazing exhibit to reality.  Even twenty years later. they are still thrilled by it all.

As you enter the Station at Citigroup Center exhibit, you find yourself standing in front of  the vast Westshore Terminal of the New York Central Railroad in Weehawken, N.J. then known as "the other Grand Central". The year is 1945, and World War II has just ended.   A sweeping view of New York City's skyline dominated by the Empire State Building, then the world's tallest building, rises above the long, low, station and ferry terminal building.  Switch engines shuttle train cars back and forth in the train yards behind the massive stone arches of the huge viaduct which carries a local Birney trolley car between the Weehawken Terminal and its suburban destinations.  You notice that the trolley is still carrying a "Buy War Bonds" sign on its roof.  Next you notice the three levels of trains in front of the viaduct.  They are in three different scales.  The large trains on the bottom step are in O-Scale.  On the next level up are S-Scale trains and on the level above all the trains are in HO Scale.  The effect is one of "forced perspective" with each level of trains appearing to be further back that the one in front of it.  As evening comes to Weehawken, the New York City skyline comes to life along with the many lighted billboards and flashing neon signs in Weehawken, Union City, and along the bottom O-Gauge level where "Main Street, USA" with it many shops, Town Park and Railroad Station is located.   Life has never been so good and optimism abounds.

Moving along to your left, you leave New  Jersey and find yourself in upstate New York in the bustling, but imaginary, river City of Generak. It's   Flag Day, the 14th of June  in 1955 and Generak's streets are clogged with traffic. The annual Flag Day parade is headed up Main Street as the band  plays in front of the Civil War monument in the town square.  The Generak Transit trolley car runs up the hill.  At the local theater the The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend is now playing, starring Betty Grable.  The many neon lights glow and the street lamps are lit all  throughout the town as day  turns slowly to night. The moon above the clouds begins to cast shadows throughout the town.

Rounding the corner you pass a family farm ringed by urban sprawl.  Then you enter the heavily forested Catskill mountain side of the display. Here you thrill to the sight of  two mountain trains, one passenger and  one logging,  as they appear,  disappear and reappear on the mountain rails. On the right is a cluster of brick making kilns. On the left is a  logging operation with a lumber yard and its own train. Both industries were important to the region's development.  Mid-way down the mountain is a beautifully detailed five-story mill with a mill dam whose waters meander to the Hudson River below and a dock scene complete with tugboat.

As summer turns to fall, you enter the Adirondack Mountains and see a  bustling carnival complete with  operating Ferris  wheel, hand painted carousel, tilt-a-whirl and boat ride, a clown parade and food and game booths. To one side circus performers practice their acts in front of a trailer. 

The brilliant colors of autumn are replaced by the snows of winter and we stand before a charming picture postcard holiday scene  through which runs the north pole express train. Stylized to resemble one of  Grandma Moses "primitive" paintings,  this scene boasts two  "Frozen" ponds  peopled with gliding  ice skaters (and a skating dog!). and please note folks that the trains in this scene are manufactured by Marx Trains, a Chicago area name familiar to model railroaders worldwide and among the very few trains actually made in the U.S.A.  

Four tracks on three levels run around the whole of the display. These are the main lines and have three to four trains running at the same time on each line ,over 25 individual trains, kept from running into each other by sensors wired into the tracks.  

On the lowest step run the largest trains, the "O" gauge toy trains. On the level above are the "S" gauge, Antique American Flyer  trains. Above the second level,  except in the winter scene where the trains are "O" on the upper level as well as below, the rest of the trains (and trolley cars) on the layout are "H-O".  Using three sizes of trains forces the perspective and gives an exaggerated sense of depth to the display. 

The exhibit, the station highlights the four seasons. It boasts a high-tech computerized lighting system programmed to take us seamlessly from day through night and twenty-seven automated signals and seventy separate train controls with eighteen speed controls  allow over 25 trains to run at once with three and sometimes four trains on some tracks. And that doesn't count the twenty-one separate animated scenes around the perimeter!

The station is the brainchild of Tony Award nominated Broadway set designer, Clarke Dunham, himself an avid model train collector. He sees in the exhibit an opportunity for folks to experience the nostalgia of a bygone era and to give them the chance to view that experience through a child's eyes.

   

Last modified on Tuesday, February 22, 2005