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A man stands with his back to the rails, arms on his hips while he examines the train schedule. An elderly woman sits on a bench next to a rack of magazines and newspapers. Commuters are depicted gathered beneath the Atherton train station’s terracotta roof, waiting for the Caltrain. Or the Southern Pacific, from when the stop was named “Fair Oaks.”
These are some of the fine details of the six model train displays featured in Atherton’s Train Station Museum, which opened to the public on Oct. 18. The museum sits beside the town center in the glass-enclosed decommissioned station, and serves as a memorial to the station’s 150 years of service and the railroad’s prominent history.
The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, beside Atherton’s Town Center at 80 Fair Oaks Lane It operates as a self-led walkthrough, as visitors can look at the dioramas, watch videos and read the displays detailing the town and region’s history.
By the time Caltrain closed the station in 2020, the train only stopped there on weekends — it had cut weekday service in 2005, which Vice Mayor Rick DeGolia said exacerbated an already contentious relationship between the town and transit authority.
“There are a lot of people who live around here and down that neighborhood in particular, who bought into this area in order to be closer to the train station,” DeGolia said. “They opposed the train’s decision to shut down weekday service, so there was a contentious relationship, but Caltrain had total control.”
While the town had concerns about looming state laws that would have required higher density housing near transit hubs, Caltrain closed the station due to low ridership and an “antiquated platform configuration.” DeGolia said they asked for the City Council’s support for the closure, and the council gave it on the condition that the train service provide $400,000 to renovate the then-deteriorating station building, and that it upgrade the Watkins Avenue intersection with the Caltrain tracks.
That $400,000 kickstarted the museum by allowing the town to install new glass panes, replace rotting wood and close a two-inch gap between the station’s walls and the ground. City Manager George Roderick said the town spent about $50,000 on other museum features, like the dioramas, which were designed and installed by railroad modeling company Images RR.
Dan Vargas, who co-owns the company with his brother Armando, said they were excited for the opportunity to create the models. He said they aimed to capture a wide variety of perspectives and memories residents might have relating to the station.
“Like when you’re doing art, when you capture the audience, it’s to put a smile on their face and to make them remember something they loved,” Vargas said. “The goal is to make people feel like they’re right there again, give them a chance to go back in time, in miniature.”
He said most of their jobs are for private model trains, so to have this be publicly accessible and for Atherton residents was exciting. There were about 150 people at last month’s opening, which Vargas said went well, though he wished he were able to talk with more attendees.
Roderick said a handful of people visit the station every day, and the city cleans the displays and sweeps the floors every week. He added that children enjoy the museum, and the town’s library is considering doing train-themed events.
When the station closed, former Mayor Diana Hawkins Manuelian said she proposed converting it into a museum to preserve the area’s history and serve as a tangible place people can visit, rather than something online.
“The concept behind this is that this is one specific place over time,” Hawkins Manuelian said. “How the trains changed, how the building changed, how the people and the culture around it changed.”
Although the museum just opened, Hawkins Manuelian is already looking to the future of what it can become. She’s hoping the museum can one day expand its hours of operation or add interactive components to the dioramas. That would require more structured support from residents, and she’s trying to find people who might be interested.
“It’s really just kind of a beginning,” Hawkins Manuelian said. “We definitely need to get the word out that it’s there and we need to find those people who are willing to step up to expand upon it so that it’s open on the weekends, it’s open after school, and that it has programs that bring it to life.”
