Ed Mesta’s Model Railroad

After I wrote about the L&N Railroad, Ed Mesta called me to ask if I’d like to have a look at his mod­el rail­road lay­out.  After see­ing it, I thought it deserved a sto­ry of its own.  First, a lit­tle back­ground about Ed Mesta.

Dr. Edward H. Mesta was raised in Washington County in Western Pennsylvania.  His dad had had a Lionel train lay­out (O‑gauge) that encir­cled the Christmas tree every year.  He built the engines and cars from kits.  The train lay­out was always set up on Christmas Eve.

In 1967 Ed and his wife Suzanne moved to Winchester, where Ed became pas­tor of the First Presbyterian Church.  He retired after serv­ing in that posi­tion for 31 years.  He need­ed some­thing to occu­py his time, so he decid­ed to build a mod­el rail­road in the base­ment of their house on Crescent Avenue.

Ed grew up as a mod­el­er him­self.  He start­ed with cut­ting out build­ings on the back of Cheerios box­es and putting them togeth­er.  He pro­gressed to build­ing plas­tic kits of planes, cars and ships.  He put those skills to work when he start­ed on his own HO-gauge mod­el rail­road.  Ed based the lay­out on his family’s Western Pennsylvania past.

Phase I of the project began with a 4 x 8 sheet of ply­wood mount­ed on a bench.  He planned the lay­out to rep­re­sent Finleyville, site of the Mesta fam­i­ly farm.  Laying the track and wiring was the first order of busi­ness.  Then he marked off streets and began fill­ing them with structures—homes, busi­ness­es and out­build­ings put togeth­er from kits and paint­ed.  The final stage was land­scap­ing, which includ­ed adding trees, a stream, fences, vehi­cles, peo­ple, and ani­mals along with many oth­er details.  While that was going on, he was also build­ing the loco­mo­tives and cars for the layout. 

For Phase II, Ed added on to the left side of the lay­out a 4 x 4 ply­wood sheet rep­re­sent­ing the Mesta Machine Company in West Homestead.  This was the com­pa­ny start­ed by his great-grandfather’s broth­er, George Mesta, in 1898.  The com­pa­ny pros­pered build­ing huge machines for fac­to­ries.  It was one of the largest of its kind in the world.

I count­ed 70 plus struc­tures, five loco­mo­tives, numer­ous cars, a street­car, and count­less fig­ures.  He pur­chased kits from mod­el rail­road cat­a­logs and Lexington hob­by shops.  Some struc­tures were scratch built from piece parts.  He start­ed work on the lay­out in 1998 and, remark­ably, fin­ished it in only a year and a half.  The crafts­man­ship is amazing—the fin­ished prod­uct is the work of a skilled modeler. 

After a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry, the lay­out remains intact, and the train still runs smooth­ly around the tracks.  Ed would like to find a good home for the lay­out, but there is one prob­lem:  it’s too big to get out of the base­ment in one piece.  He is inter­est­ed in find­ing some­one with the skills to dis­as­sem­ble the lay­out and put it back togeth­er in anoth­er loca­tion.  It might be a good fit for anoth­er mod­el rail­road­er or pos­si­bly even a local busi­ness that could use it as an attrac­tion to draw cus­tomers.  Ed asks any­one inter­est­ed to con­tact him at esmesta@att.net.

In clos­ing, I should men­tion that Ed wrote a book about his fam­i­ly that includes descrip­tions of Finleyville and the Mesta Machine Company:  My Mesta Family Story avail­able at Amazon.

Photo gallery

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