\u201cAs a little kid, I would come and visit the miniature railroad myself with my sister, my dad and my mom,\u201d said Averie Shaughnessy-Comfort, the executive director of The Presque Isle Light Station \u2014 the nonprofit charged with the preservation of and education about Erie\u2019s historic lighthouses. \u201cThis has kind of come full circle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The real Presque Isle Lighthouse opened in 1873 and remained in operation until around the 1940s, Shaughnessy-Comfort told NEXTpittsburgh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lighthouse used to \u201csteward in so many tons of material that came down, at first, the Erie Extension Canal, and then later, the Pennsylvania Railroad to help fuel Pittsburgh and the industrial economy,\u201d Shaughnessy-Comfort said.<\/p>\n
Presque Isle State Park \u2014 which the lighthouse is within \u2014 was established in 1927. Once the final lighthousekeeper left, park rangers used the house as a quarterhouse, of sorts. Eventually, two park managers moved in permanently and lived there until 2015, when it was sold to the then-newly formed\u00a0Presque Isle Light Station.<\/p>\n
The Presque Isle Lighthouse precedes the Science Center\u2019s Miniature Railroad and Village itself by some five decades.<\/p>\n
Nikki Wilhelm, the railroad\u2019s manager, said the model was created by Charles Bowdish in 1919<\/a>. After being displayed in Bowdish\u2019s home for many years, it was installed at the Buhl Planetarium in 1954 and would move again to the Science Center after the Planetarium\u2019s merger with Carnegie Museums in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n Science Center staff limit railroad additions to attractions and landmarks from approximately the turn of the 20th century.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have anything post-World War II, and that\u2019s really just because that\u2019s the heyday of the steam engine,\u201d Wilhelm told NEXTpittsburgh. \u201cWhen it originally started with Charlie Bowdish in the 1920s, he was representing life in that time in rural Pennsylvania, but now that\u2019s very much yesteryear vibes. Kids today, even their grandparents weren\u2019t around then.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike models of old, Wilhelm said, the lighthouse was digitally replicated and 3D printed. Its body is primarily plexiglass, but is adorned with brick paper, paint, artboard roofs and shingles crafted from sandpaper, like many of the older models.<\/p>\n \u201cSome modelers think that\u2019s cheating, but it\u2019s still a lot of work to do with 3D printing,\u201d Wilhelm said.<\/p>\n The model itself contains nods to former lighthouse residents.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have Mary Garrity Shaw, who was one of the longest-serving keepers, and her cat Patricia \u2014 they\u2019re sitting on the front porch,\u201d she said at the press event. \u201cWe also have, by the kitchen porch, Loretta Wunch Brandon with her pet raccoon, Inky. Loretta lived at the lighthouse with her parents in the 1950s.\u201d<\/p>\n In a first for the railroad, staff added beachy features to reflect the lighthouse\u2019s location along Lake Erie.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe did try to make little sand dunes \u2026 to make it look like the waves are crashing on the shore,\u201d Wilhelm said.<\/p>\n The sand, she added, is actually from Presque Isle<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Kamin Science Center hosts a community vote annually to determine the Miniature Railroad and Village\u2019s new addition. The Presque Isle Lighthouse is technically the 2025 addition; it was delayed amid the Science Center\u2019s renaming at the end of last year<\/a>. New models usually debut in late September or early October.<\/p>\n The Lighthouse won with 2,273 votes of a total 6,022 \u2014 narrowly beating out the Koontz Coffee Pot in Bedford County, which got 2,268 votes.<\/p>\n Science Center staff said the total number of votes in 2025 and 2024 \u2014 which both sat at around 6,000 \u2014 was much lower than normal because it was only open to in-person voting.<\/p>\n Votes for the 2023 and 2026 additions total in the 40,000s, thanks to online voting. Later this year, the Andrew Bayne Memorial Library in Bellevue will join the display. The library received 25,193 votes.With its annual maintenance complete, the Miniature Railroad and Village will reopen this Saturday, Feb. 28<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh and Erie have no direct connection by train \u2014 until today. The Kamin Science Center unveiled the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[136,31492,73,75,74,13820],"class_list":["post-124471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-erie","tag-kamin-science-center","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-presque-isle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/PXL_20260226_153725768.MP_-scaled.jpg\")
Miniature Railroad and Village Manager Nikki Wilhelm announces the installation of the Presque Isle Lighthouse at a press event on Thursday, Feb. 26. Photo by Roman Hladio.<\/p>\n