Toy train of 70 Christmases ago inspires Schuylkill Haven man's extensive model train display

Dec. 24—When he was 4 years old, John DiCello woke up on Christmas morning to find a model train beneath the tree in the family's home on West Norwegian Street in Pottsville.

Made by Marx, it was a locomotive with four cars on figure 8-shaped tracks with a cardboard trestle.

"I took one look at it, and that was it," recalled DiCello, 74, of Schuylkill Haven. "I was hooked."

Seventy Christmases later, the simple 4-by-8-foot piece of plywood on which the Marx toy train was displayed has grown into a permanent 350-square-foot layout that takes up most of DiCello's spacious basement.

Chief engineer on the DiCello Line, he pilots freight and passenger trains through a miniature world that mirrors America in the first half of the 20th century.

A shrill whistle cuts through the air as a powerful locomotive, smoke rising from its massive steam boiler, hauls long lines of cars filled with anthracite as the Reading Railroad had when coal was king.

A gang car, loaded with miners, plunges into the darkness at the entrance to a Reading Anthracite coal mine.

A mighty locomotive spins 180-degrees at a roundhouse, not unlike the one that inhabited the Reading's yards in Saint Clair.

"My father-in-law worked in the Reading shops in Saint Clair," said DiCello, a retired postal worker who's rich imagination has preserved bits and pieces of a world he knew growing up in Pottsville.

"When I was a boy, I would visit my aunt's on West Railroad Street," he recalled. "I remember sitting on the porch and feeling the ground shake as a train passed."

A RAILROAD BUILDER

Employing considerable carpentry and electrical skills, DiCello has built an impressive model railroad display.

Particularly over the last 20 or so years, he has installed more than 3,000 feet of wiring that powers the 10 transformers needed to run seven separate trains — almost all Lionel O-gauge — set in motion by the press of a button on a hand-held console.

The Union Pacific's "Big Boy," the largest locomotive ever built, and sleek diesels pulling Pennsylvania Railroad passenger trains ramble over elevated tracks that meander through a landscape of Americana.

Trains breeze past towns with sturdy houses, majestic churches and red brick schools — not unlike Tamaqua, Schuylkill Haven or Frackville. They're loaded with coal from tall hoppers, relieved of cargo by cranes and refreshed at a water tower.

Commuters peer from a Canadian Pacific passenger train at a roller coaster, carousel and Ferris wheel in an amusement park reminiscent of Lakewood or Schuylkill parks.

There's even a fish train — yes, DiCello insisted, there was such a thing — pulling illuminated tank cars containing sharks and turtles.

DiCello's particularly proud of the snow-covered mountainside that overlooks the train tracks. Made in part of recycled styrofoam insulation, it took more than a year to build.

The mountain, DiCello said, was the favorite of his late wife, the former Ann Marie Fronza.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

DiCello's basement speaks railroad.

The expansive model train display is complemented by an authentic railroad crossing sign on the wall, artwork of the iconic diamond-shaped "Reading Lines" logo and bar stools emblazoned with "Lionel Since 1900."

Immersed in the miniature world he's built, an ode to the mighty machines that drove the Industrial Revolution, he whiles away hours tinkering and thinking of old times.

The smell of smoke, the hissing of steam and the chug, chug-chugging of locomotives transport him to a place he once knew.

"It relaxes me," DiCello confideed. "It brings back the good years of my childhood."

As big as it is, DiCello is making his train display even bigger.

Recently, he built a new wing housing a roundhouse, inspired by an aerial photo of the Saint Clair yards from the Reading Railroad archives.

He's constantly coming up with new ideas, recently turning his attention to Andy Muller's Port Clinton-based Reading & Northern Railroad.

After 70 years, his passion for trains burns as brightly as the lights on the Christmas tree under which he discovered his first toy train.

"My layout," DiCello insisted, "will never be done."

Contact the writer: rdevlin@republicanherald.com; 570-628-6007