Kingston, New York History Films

The Kingston Model Railroad Club was founded in 1937 and celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2017, when filmmaker Stephen Blauweiss honored them by creating a short film. Meet Bob Haines, who grew up in a train family—both his father and grandfather were engineers—as he provides a glimpse into his 50 years in the club, delving into the intricate art of building, maintaining, and running an impressive collection of model trains as well as detailed miniature reconstructions of buildings and street scenes. Tom Scrivani, a member since 1986, describes the club's various departments, his passion for the engine shop, and his addiction to finding new collections at expos and on Ebay. Learn about the club's museum of train artifacts and its longstanding tradition of opening to the public on November weekends, a favorite childhood memory of so many. Travel by model train through the created landscape in this intimate portrait of a hobby struggling to stay relevant in today's technological world.

Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal is a documentary film by Stephen Blauweiss and Lynn Woods that chronicles the destruction of the waterfront district in Kingston, NY by a federally funded urban renewal project in the late 1960s. Interviews with former residents, historians, and urban renewal experts bring the destroyed neighborhood back to life and illustrate the impact of urban renewal's problematic legacy that destroyed hundreds of similar working-class urban communities across America.