So Minnesota: All aboard! North Metro Model Railroad Club has one of the largest layouts in the state

So Minnesota: All aboard! North Metro Model Railroad Club has one of the largest layouts in the state Joe Mazan KSTP So Minnesota: All aboard! North Metro Model Railroad Club has one of the largest layouts in the state A Twin Cities model railroad club hidden in a former grocery store basement has built one of Minnesota’s largest train layouts. The North Metro Model Railroad Club has spent the last decade in the basement of a former Coon Rapids grocery store. Members said the location can be so hard to find that mail was once returned because the place looked abandoned. “One day we started getting mail kicked back from people sending it to us, so I went to the post office and say, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ and they said, ‘Well, it looked abandoned,’ so I said, ‘We are not abandoned, we are here,'” a club member said. A club member said someone who had worked at the grocery store as a teenager remembered the room and talked to the landlord. The member said the club pitched its idea and got approval to move in. A look at Minnesota Member David Klemm said the layout highlights Minnesota railroad history across the state. “Our hub, Northtown Yard, is in Fridley, Minn.,” Klemm said. “And then from there we branch out to Cambridge, Rush City, Staples, Duluth, St. Cloud.” The layout covers 5,000 square feet, and members said attention is given to every part of it. Klemm said hearing visitors recognize places on the layout matters to the club. “We put a lot of effort and time into this, and to have someone say, ‘It looks like where I live,’ that means a lot,” Klemm said. Member Steve Silverman said he first walked in during an open house and was impressed. He said the club includes a wide age range of members. “During an open house, I came down here, I walked in the door and said, ‘Wow, this is great,'” Silverman said. Who joins the club? “It wasn’t a bunch of old guys running trains. We have members from the age of 19 to 92,” Silverman said. Member Kase Marshall works on real trains and then spends time on model trains after work. He said the hobby helps him unwind after a stressful week. “This is a different type of train. It’s a lot of fun. It’s great if the work week has been bad; it’s been stressful, I come down here and run trains all night,” Marshall said. The private club opens to the public a handful of times each year. Members said visitors have come from across the country and from other parts of the world, including Germany. “One gentleman from Germany came down and was just enthralled with the layout. He said, ‘In Europe, we don’t have layouts like this,'” a club member said. Members also said train wrecks happen once in a while on the layout, but no tiny people were hurt. They said the project is driven by nostalgia and will keep growing. “We’ve had accidents. We’ve had collisions. Everyone survived; no HO-scale people were harmed during those accidents, so we’re good,” a club member said.