The Central Oregon Model Railroad Club will soon be without a place to lay down its tracks.
Jim Van Voorhees and the other members of the club are requesting assistance finding a new home, a challenge brought forth by the sale of The Pine Movie Theater in downtown Prineville last week.
The club has met every week in the upstairs of the theater for six to seven years, and prior to that met in what is now the barber shop part of the building.
“We have to be out by the end of March, but the people that bought it want to rent it out, so we’d like to be out sooner,” Van Voorhees said.
The club, consisting of five active members, has created a train scene that follows the tracks through a scaled down reproduction of Prineville, Redmond, Madras and Bend.
One of their members, Brad Peterson, is confined to a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, and has not been able to see the progress the club has made in the last few years because of its upstairs location. To continue contributing to the club, Peterson has meticulously drawn the plans for what has become the elaborate train landscape.
Van Voorhees is hoping to get into a ground floor space that ideally would be as large as their current room at about 1,000 square feet.
“Without being able to pay rent, we’re hoping for anything we can get,” Van Voorhees said. “We really want to be on the ground floor. We need any size room, we’ll make it work. We don’t care if it’s a small room that we can store stuff in and have a work table. That works for the time being, but we’re really looking for something we can get into and stay in. It’s a lot of work taking this thing down and putting it back up again.”
If you have information for a possible new location, please contact Jim Van Voorhees at 447-1830.

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