Oak Park Model Engineers Open Spring House to Families May 2

The difference between a hobby shop demonstration and what happens at 255 Augusta St. comes down to one thing: at OPSME's Spring Open House on May 2, you get to drive.

The Oak Park Society of Model Engineers will open the lower level of the Dole Center to the public from 12:01 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., free of charge. Alongside the club's main three-level DCC layout, which traces the Chicago Great Western Railroad's route from Chicago through to Des Moines, Iowa during the steam-to-diesel transition era, members will have a separate DC layout running specifically for visitors who want hands-on time at the throttle. Kids can run trains; beginners can get questions answered; experienced modelers can examine the progress on a two-state HO-scale installation at 1:87 ratio. Club members will also walk visitors through scenery construction, weathering techniques, and locomotive operations in the kind of informal Q&A you won't get from a packaged in-store demo.

The club's membership roster is itself a number worth pausing on: OPSME has grown to more than 100 members, a figure that carries particular weight given the club's recent history. In 2020, the Park District of Oak Park required OPSME to maintain at least 36 Oak Park-resident members to keep its Dole Center space. Club spokesperson Vozak told the Wednesday Journal at the time that OPSME responded by "wildly recruiting." The results speak for themselves.

That recruitment push reflects something fundamental about how OPSME operates. The club is entirely self-supporting; dues and donations fund operations, and the club pays rent to the Park District without receiving any village of Oak Park funding. Public open houses are not optional outreach. They are how the organization sustains itself. The Spring Open House, which runs on the same 12:01-to-5:00 p.m. format as the club's Fall counterpart, draws families, casual visitors, and prospective members who might not otherwise find their way to a basement layout now in its seventh decade of operation.

OPSME has occupied its space at the Dole Center since approximately 1977, after founding in 1963 at Carroll Center and a stint at Barrie Park Recreation Center. WGN-TV's "Around Town" segment has featured the club, as has the Wednesday Journal in multiple feature stories over the years.

For May 2: the Dole Center is at 255 Augusta St., Oak Park, one block east of Ridgeland Avenue; use the west door entry. Hours run 12:01 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free, and door prizes will be on hand. The minimum age for club membership is 11, but younger children are welcome at the open house and have access to a separate layout. Miss the open house and OPSME still opens to the public every Sunday from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., holidays excluded.