Pittsburgh and Erie have no direct connection by train — until today.
The Kamin Science Center unveiled the newest addition to its iconic Miniature Railroad & Village, the Presque Isle Lighthouse, at a media event on Thursday, Feb. 26.
“As a little kid, I would come and visit the miniature railroad myself with my sister, my dad and my mom,” said Averie Shaughnessy-Comfort, the executive director of The Presque Isle Light Station — the nonprofit charged with the preservation of and education about Erie’s historic lighthouses. “This has kind of come full circle.”
The real Presque Isle Lighthouse opened in 1873 and remained in operation until around the 1940s, Shaughnessy-Comfort told NEXTpittsburgh.
The Lighthouse used to “steward 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,” Shaughnessy-Comfort said.
Presque Isle State Park — which the lighthouse is within — 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 Presque Isle Light Station.
The Presque Isle Lighthouse precedes the Science Center’s Miniature Railroad and Village itself by some five decades.
Nikki Wilhelm, the railroad’s manager, said the model was created by Charles Bowdish in 1919. After being displayed in Bowdish’s home for many years, it was installed at the Buhl Planetarium in 1954 and would move again to the Science Center after the Planetarium’s merger with Carnegie Museums in the early 1990s.
Science Center staff limit railroad additions to attractions and landmarks from approximately the turn of the 20th century.
“We don’t have anything post-World War II, and that’s really just because that’s the heyday of the steam engine,” Wilhelm told NEXTpittsburgh. “When it originally started with Charlie Bowdish in the 1920s, he was representing life in that time in rural Pennsylvania, but now that’s very much yesteryear vibes. Kids today, even their grandparents weren’t around then.”
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.
“Some modelers think that’s cheating, but it’s still a lot of work to do with 3D printing,” Wilhelm said.
The model itself contains nods to former lighthouse residents.
“We have Mary Garrity Shaw, who was one of the longest-serving keepers, and her cat Patricia — they’re sitting on the front porch,” she said at the press event. “We 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.”
In a first for the railroad, staff added beachy features to reflect the lighthouse’s location along Lake Erie.
“We did try to make little sand dunes … to make it look like the waves are crashing on the shore,” Wilhelm said.
The sand, she added, is actually from Presque Isle.
The Kamin Science Center hosts a community vote annually to determine the Miniature Railroad and Village’s new addition. The Presque Isle Lighthouse is technically the 2025 addition; it was delayed amid the Science Center’s renaming at the end of last year. New models usually debut in late September or early October.
The Lighthouse won with 2,273 votes of a total 6,022 — narrowly beating out the Koontz Coffee Pot in Bedford County, which got 2,268 votes.
Science Center staff said the total number of votes in 2025 and 2024 — which both sat at around 6,000 — was much lower than normal because it was only open to in-person voting.
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.