Seashore Trolley Museum’s new Maine Central Model Railroad building is now open year-round. The exhibit is open Thursdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this winter and spring. The building is also open on Wednesdays during Maine and New Hampshire school vacation weeks.

More than 3,000 feet of track passes through towns modeled on real Maine places, mines and mills, lobster boats and lighthouses, cities and villages. Contributed / Seashore Trolley Museum

According to a news release, more hours will be added when the rest of the museum’s 350-acre campus re-opens for the season on Saturday, May 3, for heritage trolley rides and more. Tickets to view the model railroad are $5 per person and children 5 and younger are admitted free. Seashore Trolley Museum members are admitted free. Family memberships are $60/year and include up to two adults and three children per museum visit on general admission days.

The Maine Central Model Railroad is the state of Maine’s largest HO-scale model railroad. The exhibit originated from the home of Helen and Harold “Buz” Beal, from Jonesport. For decades, the couple opened their home to guests from all over the world to view their model railroad. From Quoddy Lighthouse to the mountains of Maine, to the paper mills and Dragon Cement, street blocks representing the communities the Maine Central Model Railroad operated through and several roundhouses, tunnels, rivers and the ocean. Best-selling author Stephen King even provided the designs of his Victorian home in Bangor to the Beal’s, and they replicated it.

Seashore Trolley Museum accepted the Beal’s model railroad donation in 2020 and began constructing a new building to house the donation, with thanks to a $3.4 million donation by Hansjoerg Wyss and the Wyss Medical Foundation. The building and the model railroad opened to the public in May 2024 and the model railroad’s winter operations allow Seashore Trolley Museum to become a year-round museum.

Local artist Diane Lent painted flowing landscape murals to accompany the model railroad. Contributed / Seashore Trolley Museum

Emmalyn Bentley, of Cape Neddick, has also donated a section of Seashore Trolley Museum’s model railroad. Bentley also created an HO-scale layout of the Maine Central Model Railroad as well as the Atlantic Shore Line Railway, with the communities of Cape Neddick and York featured in her model. Seashore volunteers adapted Bentley’s donation into the museum’s model railroad.

New sections of the model railroad have also been developed over the past six months by museum volunteers. Ellsworth is currently under construction and, following the project, volunteers will begin working to build models of the communities of Saco, Biddeford, Kennebunkport, Kennebunk and Arundel, along with a model of Seashore Trolley Museum. The layout will add trolley lines to showcase the museum’s trolley collection in HO-scale.

For more information, visit www.trolleymuseum.org.