The Carquinez Model Railroad Society runs more than 180 members and a three-tier layout out of a former Odd Fellows Hall in Crockett. Its next open house, on Sept. 12, doubles as a 9/11 memorial for local first responders.

Twenty-two years ago, a train club that had been renting on the Solano County fairgrounds got told to leave. Rather than find another landlord, its members pooled money and bought a building: a 129-year-old former Odd Fellows Hall at 645 Loring Ave in Crockett, up a steep exterior stair, on a block that looks straight across at the C&H Sugar refinery. The stated aim, this time, was to never have to move again.

That is the Carquinez Model Railroad Society, or CMRS, and the purchase is the reason it still exists. The nonprofit now counts more than 180 members and fills a 2,000-square-foot hall with a three-tier layout — a little over a mile of HO-scale track modeling the old Southern Pacific mainline from Oakland out to Sparks, Nevada. At that scale the world runs about 1/87th of life size; a grown man stands roughly three-quarters of an inch tall.

Owning the building means running it like a small landlord. The ground floor is leased to the Sugar Workers Union. Upstairs sits the Carquinez Toy Train Operating Museum, a separate model built to a larger scale. Membership dues, donations, grants, admission tickets and rent are what cover a century-plus-old structure that, as KQED's Sarah Hotchkiss described in a profile published this month, the volunteers patch and sweep themselves.

The labor is mostly retirees. Roberto Lombardi, who ran facilities for the San Francisco Public Library before retiring, told KQED the crowds at his first open house "blew me away." A scenic team led by former Amtrak worker Dexter Day shows up every Tuesday, eats breakfast together first, and then grinds on projects measured in years — a Port of Stockton build-out, or just the endless job of keeping dust off the plaster hills.

Anyone curious can climb the stairs on Saturday, Sept. 12, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., when the club opens its doors for a 9/11 memorial open house (external source, opens in a new tab) honoring first responders and benefiting the Crockett–Carquinez Fire Department. Admission runs $5 for adults. Kids 16 and under get in free. Stepstools wait by the layout for the ones too short to see over the edge. More open houses land Oct. 24–25 and Dec. 5.