In January of this year, the future looked bleak for the storied Pacific Southern Railway, a model railroad club based in Rocky Hill, New Jersey. Their decades-old, constantly evolving club layout was facing an existential threat.
The HO scale Pacific Southern Railway, spanning 5,000 square feet with over 3,500 feet of handlaid track, began its journey in 1962 in the basement of a New Jersey farmhouse. Avid model railroader Bob Latham designed the home with his passion in mind. Over more than two decades, the layout expanded throughout the basement as the Pacific Southern Railway’s reputation and membership grew.
Tragically, Bob Latham passed away in 1988. Geoff Green, a founding member, acquired the house and, with it, the Pacific Southern Railway. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, the layout continued to flourish, eventually commanding a 30 x 45-foot addition to the basement.
In 2016, Carl and Anne Pate — also club members — acquired the home, ensuring the continuation of the sprawling layout. However, Carl’s passing in June of 2024, coupled with the impending sale of the house, cast an uncertain shadow over the Pacific Southern Railway’s future.
What was needed was a “unicorn buyer”: someone who would purchase the house without dismantling the expansive layout, allow club members continued access, and agree to host the club’s charitable open houses. Anyone who has sold a house in the past decade can tell you that unicorn buyers are about as common as actual unicorns, and the Pacific Southern Railway and its members were facing an uncertain future.
Then, a Wall Street Journal article about the pending sale caught the eye of a television star.
If you’ve watched television in the past decade and a half, chances are you’ve seen James Murray, better known as “Murr,” from the long-running, widely beloved hidden-camera comedy show Impractical Jokers on TBS (formerly TruTV). Murr is also a lifelong train enthusiast. “My best memories from childhood are my father and I building our model train layout,” he shares. His love for trains even extends to his writing: “…My first book trilogy came out like six years ago. It was all about trains. It was about creatures in the subways in New York City that are tearing the subways apart.”
The WSJ article resonated deeply with Murr, a sympathetic reader and fellow railfan. “…The Wall Street Journal and local papers covered the story of the Pacific Southern Railway and the circumstances they were in. It came on our radar, my wife and I, (and) it was five minutes away from our house.”
Murr elaborates on the situation: “The former owner of the house and President of the club died from cancer about a year and a half ago. The widow was put in a situation where she was forced to sell the house, and there’s just no way in this day and age anyone’s going to let a model railroad club come into their house multiple times a week, and open up the house once a year to the public… I didn’t know this existed right by our house, much less this situation.”
Coincidentally, Murr and his wife, Melissa, were also facing a space crunch. Melissa’s candle company, 95 Candles, which she started during COVID-19, had rapidly expanded. “She was an elder care nurse and then had to pivot during COVID… business grew and grew and took over our entire garage, and the entire basement, and the entire office, and so I built a shed, and she took over that entirely. And we’re just out of space.” They also run 95 Charity, an Alzheimer’s charity that has seen significant growth. “So we were at a critical point where I said to Melissa, ‘we need to solve this problem. We need to buy a warehouse that we can run your company out of, run the Alzheimer’s charity out of.’ And I said, ‘why don’t we approach this train club and see if we can solve two problems at once?'”
With that, Murr acquired the house, granting the Pacific Southern Railway Club full access to the layout while also providing Melissa with much-needed space for her business and their charity. In short, the Pacific Southern Railway had found their unicorn buyer, and then some.
With their future secured, what’s next for the Pacific Southern Railway?
“I may not know how to build track from scratch, but I can do other things for the club,” Murr states.
Among his contributions, Murr also funded a new website for the Pacific Southern Railway. “I hired our web guy to relaunch the whole website, adding things like virtual memberships, where anyone from around the world can become a member… every two weeks they get a video from me in the layout downstairs, they get to see the other Impractical Jokers there too. They get free tickets to the annual open house, they get their swag, the membership card… They get to be part of something that needs to be preserved, that’s a non-profit so they can deduct it from their taxes, too… You can become an active member of the club on the website, a virtual member, a junior member, we launched a merch store…. it all goes to charity.”
The Pacific Southern Railway hosts annual open houses, showcasing their massive, museum-quality layout to the public. “To date, they’ve donated over $250,000 to fire and EMT services in Jersey.” Just last year, Murr and Melissa’s Alzheimer’s research charity event raised an impressive $132,000.
Future plans also include constructing a large-scale layout in the detached garage and an already-in-progress redesign of the clubhouse space to resemble a mid-century passenger car. The future is indeed bright for the Pacific Southern Railway.
If you’re interested in becoming a member of the Pacific Southern Railway, click here. The club offers Active and Junior memberships, as well as a Virtual membership.
