The Maine Central Model Railroad, created by Helen and Harold Beal of Jonesport, will open in a new building at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport on Saturday, June 15. A ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 1 p.m.
The Beals recreated Stephen King's house from the original plans. STM photos.
The model railroad layout was built by Helen and Harold “Buz” Beal in Jonesport. For decades, the couple opened their home to guests from all over the world to view one of Maine’s largest HO-scale model railroads. The couple recreated landscapes and towns, from Quoddy Lighthouse and the mountains of Maine to paper mills and fishing harbors, with several roundhouses, tunnels, and rivers as well. Stephen King even provided the designs of his Victorian home in Bangor which Helen and Buz replicated expertly.
Upon Buz’s passing in 2013, Helen continued to curate the layout while looking for another model club or nonprofit to resume ownership. Because of the layout’s impressive size, no one could accept the donation without taking the model apart and making the layout much smaller.
The new railroad building.
Hansjoerg Wyss, a friend of the Beals and a rail enthusiast and philanthropist, approached the Seashore Trolley Museum in 2020 to ask if it might consider providing a home for the layout. Like the other groups approached, the museum did not have the space to display such a large model. The museum researched the layout for months to determine what type of facility would be needed to house such an artifact.
Museum volunteer and architect Herb Fremin designed a building to house the railroad and helped museum staff determine how to adapt the layout to meet Kennebunkport building codes and ADA compliance, in particular widening all the aisles to modern standards. The Wyss Foundation stepped forward to make this project a reality. Their donation is the largest gift in Seashore Trolley Museum’s 85-year history. It also will allow the Museum to remain open year-round for the very first time.
The detail in the handmade railroad layout is remarkable.
The model including its 500 locomotives and train cars was disassembled in Jonesport and relocated to climate-controlled storage units in Kennebunk in April 2022 by Stephan Lamb Associates, a professional model railroad layout moving company, which returned in November 2023 to reinstall it in the new building.
Seashore Trolley Museum would like to thank Helen Beal and the Beal family, the Wyss Medical Foundation, Harry Fish, and the Beal family, who made this possible.