Editor’s note: Trains were vital to the creation of the United States of America. Milam County has two museums devoted to train history with one in Cameron and the other in Rockdale.
Visitors walking into the Milam County Railroad Museum will be immediately drawn to the huge diorama that takes up most of the exhibit space in the building off the square in downtown Cameron.
The scale model of the city of Cameron and the surrounding area was made by native John John son with help from his late wife Frances.
“It’s Cameron in the 1940s,” said Jaime Lawson, who is the museum director. “Every building looks like it did in the ’40s.”
To build the replica Johnson used memories from his childhood, interviews with people, as well as photos and architectural drawings, Lawson said.
The diorama is built to HO scale which is 1/87th of life size.
While the whole diorama is impressive to view with McLane Wholesale, the Cameron School, Matula Grocery and St. Monica Catholic Church all having their place, it is the Milam County Courthouse that grabs the eye.
“It took six months to build the courthouse,” Lawson said. “Sheriff (Carl) Black let him measure every detail in the courthouse, even up on the roof.”
The courthouse was built in four layers.
“It’s four sections set on top of each other like a cake,” Lawson said. “It is the most detailed building on the model.”
So many of the buildings depicted which include his boyhood home and his grandparents' home are gone now. But they won’t be forgotten with their place in the diorama.
In fact, Johnson would sometimes ride his bike from his house to sit on the porch of his grandparents’ house to watch the trains stop, and then go by.
“Johnson is fond of saying, ‘It is a model of a town with a train going through it’,” Lawson said.
However, those trains coming to Cameron were vital to its history.
It was the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad that helped Cameron remain the county seat of Milam County, Lawson said.
“Uriah Lott got Cameron put on the route to Waco,” he said. The town of Lott in Falls County is named for the railroad man.
There are other exhibits in the museum that now occupy the old JC Penney building.
There is no admission charged, but donations are always welcome, Lawson noted.
The county-owned, volunteer operated museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
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