The Sopranos & Model Trains
I was browsing local news sites & found an interesting piece on the model trains used in The Sopranos. I have to admit I never got into the show so I had no idea trains played a roll in the show. The only thing I watched was the series finale’s ending as for some reason it caught my eye. The model train that fictional mobster Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri bled to death on after being shot in the next-to-last episode will be on display in New Jersey. Here is an article about it courtesy of 1010 Wins:
PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — The model trains that fictional mobster Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri bled to death on after being shot in the next-to-last episode of HBO’s “The Sopranos” have found a temporary home here in a former silk mill.
Model train fanatics who saw the episode had speculated on Web blogs about where the train set had ended up: Some thought France, where “Sopranos” creator David Chase went before the season finale aired; others joked it was in the Meadowlands, a legendary mafia dumping ground.
The trains, it turns out, went to Paterson’s North West Jersey Hi-Railers club because Mathew Horning, the son of one of the club’s trustees, was an intern at Lionel Model Trains when HBO called there looking for a temporary home for the Bacala display. When someone from Lionel mentioned the HBO call to Horning, he said he knew of just the place.
Bacala, played by actor Steven R. Schirripa, was a huge model train fan in the show, using it as a distraction from his daily criminal routines. In the final moments of his life on the show, Bacala is shopping for his hobby right before he takes his final spill on a model train set.
The set still has trails of stage blood on it from Bacala’s death at the hands of two gunmen. It will be on display Sept. 30 at the Paterson club, where about 1,000 people are expected to come.
The club is housed in a 12,500-square-foot room in a former silk mill in Paterson, where the club’s co-sponsors, Bernie Callen and Marty Horning, run a picture frame and matte company.
“When you see the (Bacala) detail work, it doesn’t compare to what’s upstairs, it doesn’t compare at all,” Bernie Callen told the Herald News of West Paterson for Tuesday newspapers.
The club has about two miles of train tracks that are situated around an estimated $1 million worth of scenery.
This is pretty cool if you ask me…
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