Second Baptist Church hosted an activity to bring families closer and spark an interest in an American pastime.

The church had a model train display set up at the church over the weekend, inviting the public in for some family fun. The 18-foot by 26-foot modular setup included many different model trains and an extensive layout of scenery, buildings and other additions.

“It’s kind of an open house for the church,” said Bob Burroughs, a church member who headed the project. “The church is all decorated, and we’ll have the train display going in the fellowship hall.”

Burroughs, who owns the collection of layouts and model train equipment used to make the display, said the activity was part of an outreach initiative to bring members of the community into the church for relationship-building purposes, as well as to give families something fun to do together. Burroughs has been collecting model trains since Christmas of 1946 and some of the equipment used in the display at Second Baptist is from that time period.

The model train display, Burroughs hopes, will spark an interest in the community and get families back to doing activities together that require working together to accomplish a goal, he said.

“You want to get dad and grandpa working with the kids and grandkids and teach things they don’t teach in school anymore,” Burroughs said. “Dream something up, plan it out and build it. We get together, put up a display, and we can run trains and have fun together. We get families back together and doing something together and build relationships and lead some people to faith in Christ.”

Today, Burroughs will be moving the display to Historic Port of Washington Museum on Market Street, where it will be open for the public through Saturday.

The display will be open at Historic Port of Washington Museum: Dec. 15-17, from 4-6:30 p.m.; Dec. 18, from 4-8 p.m.; and Dec. 19, from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.