Display of vintage Irwin buildings was labor of love for borough native

Melvyn Rasel dedicated countless hours and money over four decades to create an homage to his hometown, building small plastic replicas of Irwin landmarks from his childhood in the 1950s as part of an extensive model train layout in his Plum home.

His family is now sharing this labor of love with the Irwin community by creating a display at the Norwin Historical Society of 60 replica commercial buildings and houses Rasel recalled from growing up in Irwin, said his son, Brian Rasel.

The display at 304 Main St., Irwin, includes replicas of the G.C. Murphy store, fire station, grocery store, Snyder Funeral Home, jewelry store, hardware stores and the Irwin train station, as well as an HO model locomotive and small vehicles traveling Main Street. Mel Rasel created houses similar to ones from his Fourth Street neighborhood, as well as the Clark Bar Building and Westinghouse Electric Corp. building, both on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

“I’m hoping that some of the people who see it will enjoy it and remember what Irwin was like,” said his son, 37, of Penn Township.

The seeds for displaying Mel Rasel’s handiwork were planted this summer when, before he died in August at 81, he told historical society members about his Irwin-centric display and they asked him to consider exhibiting some of his creations at the historical society, said Geralyn DeFelice, a historical society board member.

When Brian Rasel had heard that society members contacted his mother, Priscilla “P.J.,” about exhibiting some of this father’s models, “I thought it would be a wonderful way to honor him.”

Rasel carefully put together the display in the windows in October, transporting his father’s model houses and HO-scale trains from his parents’ home in Plum to Irwin.

“For me, it’s a piece of my dad. It is forever,” Rasel said as he viewed his father’s handiwork.

The plan is to have the display in the windows until January, Rasel said.

So realistic are the buildings that Mel Rasel painstakingly created that Richard Siniawski of Irwin said, “if you grew up here, you remember all of these (buildings).”

In order to make replicas of buildings in Irwin in the 1950s, P.J. Rasel said her husband would buy the plastic building kits but “would take plastic pieces from other kits and put (them) together as he remembered it.”

P.J. said her husband worked diligently to make the Irwin train station as accurate as possible.

“He kept finding photographs of the train station and learned its design was one-of-a-kind” in the nation, she said.

Rasel was a frequent customer at Niedzalkoski Train Shop in Jeannette, where he would buy model trains and parts for the replica houses he was creating, owner Mike Niedzalkoski said.

Niedzalkoski said he shared photographs with Rasel of the old Irwin train station so he could make it as realistic as possible.

“He was a great guy,” Niedzalkoski said of Rasel.

So meticulous in creating the features of the buildings — including windows and blinds — Mel Rasel would use a magnifying glass and tweezers in some of the construction, such as gluing tiny tiles on the roof.

His retirement in 2009 gave him more time to devote to the train display, his family said. He was working on constructing three more buildings before he died, including The Lamp Theatre.

Even though he constructed such a large display — which was up year-round in his basement — he was never completely finished, Brian Rasel said.

“It was always the next building,” he added.

Rasel said that, while he was “very close” to his father, he did not help him create the displays or set up the model layout.

“It was his baby, and I knew it was his baby,” Brian Rasel said.

Now Rasel has inherited the massive display of trains and buildings that sit on a platform — about 10 feet long and 8 feet wide — from the basement of his mother’s home in the Holiday Park section of Plum.

“Whether it was my passion or not, it is going to be my passion,” Brian Rasel said. “It’s the last piece of my dad’s heart that I can touch.”