Points in Pittsburgh: Miniatures in Diorama

Miniature Railroad and Village at Carnegie Science Center showcases pre-1940 Western Pennsylvania

Mar 14, 2023

Miniatures in diorama have enticed and fascinated people for generations. The word diorama—a term, like so many words, which originates with the Greeks (di denotes through; orama denotes that which is seen)—came into use during the 19th century in France. Diorama means through that which is seen. Pittsburgh’s grandest diorama occupies a room on the second floor of a building on the Ohio River’s northern shore.

Forbes Field model (photo by Scott Holleran)

In this diorama, which must be seen, heard and studied to be appreciated, a miniature railroad runs through Western Pennsylvania towns, cities, farms, parks and lands. The exhibit is a byproduct of what began as a hobbyist’s private property, which moved to the Institute for Popular Science, which was subsumed by Pittsburgh’s Buhl Planetarium and, finally, in 1991, moved to the Carnegie Science Center. The miniature display in O railroad scale appears in scenery recreating pre-1940 regional history. Recently, during various research visits, partly for the purpose of writing this article, I’ve spent hours in this room.

Fallingwater model (photo by Scott Holleran)

The Miniature Railroad and Village, as it has been designated, marked its’ centenary in 2019. The elaborate diorama recreates an airport, an incline, a baseball stadium, an amusement park entrance, a rollercoaster, a steel mill, the original Heinz factory, the house from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, downtown stores and skyscrapers, area homes and farms and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Those are highlights. This year, modeling artists added a hospital for the first time in the diorama’s history.

Each time I visit, I learn something important about Pittsburgh. Guides stand by to answer questions in the large room, which is enclosed behind a glass door located to the left of the center’s main escalator. Monitors along the display’s elevated platform provide facts about certain models and the original structures or scenery and related events they recreate. Walled exhibits offer details, too. (This book on the diorama and its history, which I reviewed earlier this month on Autonomia, helps).

I learn with amazement at the scholarship, craftsmanship and overall artistry of both what’s metaphysical and manmade in miniature. Every detail of this showroom exists to give the visitor a sharper perspective with a sense of majesty in motion. Smaller scenes change with varying sounds, lights and animation. It is rare to find a place where one can both step back to a bygone world with a wider scope and also pause, peer and examine a dramatic and three dimensional recreation of reality.

Miniatures through history across the globe

An eidophusikon—a large scale miniature theater—by theatrical designer Philip James de Loutherbourg first appeared during the 18th century. Painter, physicist and inventor Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, with Charles-Marie Bouton, debuted an exhibition in Paris in 1822 which Daguerre called the Diorama. In Spain, a 16th century fortress built to defend against a French invasion, the Jaca Citadel, now displays a collection of military-historical dioramas going back to chariot warfare in ancient Egypt. Australian War Memorial dioramas capture soldier experiences during the Great War (World War One), including on the Western Front and at Gallipoli.

Here in the U.S., Harvard University’s forest property in Western Massachusetts features dioramas modeling 23 woodlands. A man named Howard Tibbals worked for 50 years to create a diorama of what he called “the Greatest Show on Earth,” creating the world’s largest miniature circus, now showcased at Florida’s Ringling Circus Museum. Walt Disney realized his love of miniatures at Disneyland with a 306-foot long diorama—once described as the “longest diorama in the world”—on the Disneyland Railroad. Artist Delmer Yoakum painted Walt Disney’s realistic Grand Canyon diorama, which was scored to Ferde Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” letting passengers ride while viewing scenery from the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Audio-Animatronic dinosaurs, originally created by Walt Disney for the Ford Motor Company’s Magic Skyway at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, were added in 1966 for a second series of scenes in Disneyland’s diorama.

In Pittsburgh, besides a miniature railroad diorama at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Schenley Park, a life-sized “Art of the Diorama” exhibits on the first floor of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. There’s a collection of hundreds of miniatures donated by museum patron Sarah Mellon Scaife—a series of tiny, glowing rooms reproducing the Scaife residence in Ligonier, Pennsylvania—between Carnegie Museum of Art’s sky-lighted Halls of Architecture and Sculpture.

Westinghouse lab model (photo by Scott Holleran)

Carnegie Science Center’s Miniature Railroad and Village is the only Pittsburgh diorama to recreate America’s first gateway to the West in its industrial youth and glory. Early American machines, locomotives, buildings, arenas and factories, constructed and cutting into hills with snaking rivers and creeks—beautified by radical architecture—exists to amuse, entertain and enrich.

I’ve visited Fallingwater. I’ve boarded an incline and taken it for a ride many times. I’ve walked along grating, steep stairs and catwalks at a steel mill. Observing Western Pennsylvania in miniature isn’t exactly like flying over some of the world’s capitalist wonders. Yet being at liberty to stop, concretize and contextualize a model in three dimensions from various distances and angles, and to read stories at one’s discretion—at one’s own pace—can, in a way, activate and stir the imagination faster and more fully than flying through air. A visit can cause one to think, reflect and contemplate. Looking upon the human experience in miniature gives one an abiding sense of proportion, engineering, time, creativity and control. A miniature diorama can put you on top of the world. Particularly the miniature industrial models displayed in Pittsburgh.