Snoqualmie approves downtown model train museum

When the sun is shining and birds are flying high over Lake Washington, thunder can be heard in a Medina basement less than half a mile from the shore. Here, a day spans 12 minutes, coyotes howl as the sun sets, and men are heard yelling “fire in the hole!”

The basement, in the home of Peter Hambling, houses a 3,700-square-foot, historically accurate O-scale model railroad display. It includes a sophisticated system of LED lights, sound effects and animated scenes using model figures. Since 2008, the display has been constructed in sections, with fishing wire at the seams so it can come apart. Hambling’s intention has always been to donate the display and move it to a public space.

“This is just something that we are really excited to share with people,” project manager Rob Nelson said. “There’s nothing like this in the area, and there’s really nothing like it in the country.”

The model trains are on track to get a new home in downtown Snoqualmie after the Snoqualmie City Council approved the development agreement for Hambling’s model railroad museum Sept. 30. It’s now up to Hambling’s nonprofit, Pacific West Rail Foundation (PWRF), to see it through. Hambling is giving himself and his team three years to fundraise before construction begins, and construction itself is estimated to take two years.

The development agreement is for the lot at Railroad Avenue and SE King Street, which currently houses a gravel parking lot, Snoqualmie Bowling and Dark Horse Brew. According to the agreement, the lot consists of four parcels, two of which Hambling will purchase and gift to PWRF. The other two parcels are city-owned, and the city plans to transfer ownership to PWRF.

PWRF has hired Seattle architecture firm Olson Kundig to design the museum, but will not start construction until the needed funds are raised. According to the development agreement, Olson Kundig estimates the project to cost anywhere from $28 million to $42 million.

Hambling said it’s impossible to say right now what the project will cost, but he believes he’ll know within a year whether fundraising is feasible. Potential funding sources, as listed in the development agreement, include government grants, online campaigns, corporate donations and individual or charitable gifts. PWRF is using its own connections to fundraise and will not hire a fundraising consultant.

“I have no experience raising money, let alone what this is going to cost,” Hambling said. “All I can do is try. I know a number of people around here, and I’m just going to go to them and say, ‘Can you help? And if you can’t, can you point me to somebody who can?’”

A world made by hand

By trade, Hambling is the co-founder of Digital Control Incorporated, a company out of Kent that designs and builds tech used in underground construction. The company, family-owned since its start in 1990, has kept him very busy and brought him a lot of success.

But in the early 2000s, as work was weighing on him, Hambling was on the hunt for a creative outlet. He cold-called famed model railroader John Armstrong and asked him to design a model to be built in his house.

“He kind of laughed and said, ‘Sure,’” Hambling said.

After realizing it wouldn’t fit elsewhere, Hambling had a contractor dig out and build a basement just for the model. In 2008, he hired a full-time staff to start building what is now a multimillion-dollar, historically accurate model train display.

The display has 100 engines, 125 passenger cars and 550 freight cars running on a total half-mile of tracks though 14 North American geographical locations. It has sound effects, like train horns and owl hoots, and lighting that changes from day to night. It has model figures that move to create short scenes, like a Wild West shootout and men dumping coal. The display’s most complex control board runs a fully functional, custom built coal tipple that dumps coal into rail cars.

Nelson did the wiring, and the topography, complete with dirt from the real-life locations, was handmade by lead scenery artist Todd Gamble. The water features were made by layering tinted resin, the trees are made of twisted wire and hemp fiber, and the rocks are made of extruded polystyrene, a foam used for insulation. The walls behind the 3D display show more mountains, trees and rivers, hand-painted by Edmonds artist Andy Eccleshall on a peel-and-stick canvas that can be moved to the museum.

The whole system is automated, so those who don’t know how to work the computers, like the Hamblings, can run it with the push of a button, Nelson said. There are iPads throughout acting as informational kiosks. There are sensors that turn on fake smoke and fiber optic tree embers as viewers pass by.

“It really isn’t about trains. It’s about imagination,” Hambling said. “It’s about immersing yourself in a world that’s different than [ours] and getting lost in it.”

Home is where the trains are

When choosing a location for the museum, Hambling considered several spots before settling on Snoqualmie. Aside from it already being a train town, Snoqualmie was the winner because it allowed Hambling to keep his team intact, as both Nelson and Gamble live in the Valley.

“I love the area, I love the town, I love the people — and these guys will carry on and run this if we can get this project done,” Hambling said. “I’m doing it with people who built this with their hands, built it with the hours in their life, and they want to stay on with it.”

When Hambling first approached the city in 2022, he pitched building the museum near the corner of Railroad Avenue and Snoqualmie Parkway. But in 2023, the Snoqualmie Tribal Council voiced concerns about having the project so close to Snoqualmie Falls and the protected land known as Two Sisters Return, both sacred sites for the tribe.

Last summer, Hambling and the team had a few meetings with Snoqualmie Tribe leaders, who ultimately told them they couldn’t support development of that lot.

“I thought for a second, and I said, ‘OK, we’ll leave the corner lot,’ … the whole energy of that meeting changed,” Hambling said. “I want to be next door to people who want us to be there, that like us being there.”

The location change turned out all the better, Hambling said. The lot they settled on is across the street from the Northwest Railway Museum and adjacent to Sandy Cove Park. The team hopes the museum will draw more visitors to historic Snoqualmie every day of the week, in turn benefiting neighbor businesses.

“We’re really hoping that those Monday through Fridays … it’ll draw everyone into downtown,” project manager Rob Nelson said. “You get enough hours of things to do … it’ll kind of disperse out to everyone else, which will be really cool to see.”

The project aligns with the City of Snoqualmie’s priorities and history, Mayor Katherine Ross said in a news release. Community liaison Nicole Wiebe said the city is embracing its identity as a train museum town.

“It creates an opportunity in the city for some economic development and vitality,” she said. “And instead of being in competition with the Northwest Railway Museum … it’s two for one.”

In the museum, the display will be spread out and rearranged to meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards, growing from 3,700 square feet to 8,000. It will be housed in a 15,000-square-foot room so the team can continue adding to it. There will also be a gift shop, space for Gamble to teach scenery workshops and event space.

It could take up to a year for Nelson and Gamble to take the display apart and prepare it to be moved, but they can’t start yet, Nelson said. The display is the selling point, and they want potential donors to see it.

“They come down here, their jaws drop,” he said. “We hope people come down here and go, ‘This is something I want to be a part of.’ Because that’s the biggest struggle with all this — until you see it, you just don’t understand what it is.”