Plenty of kids build whole worlds out of Legos or assemble model train sets, but one young Fallston man has kept up a building hobby from a more bygone era.
Jack Swab's grandfather left him pieces of Plasticville, a brand of snap-together model buildings and accessories, popular in the 1950s and designed to be used with electric trains like Lionel and American Flyer.
The 19-year-old Swab, who lives in Fallston, is not just the heir of the Plasticville collection but a new fan and collector himself.
He is the youngest member of the Plasticville Collectors Association, having joined at age 10, and has served as the group's social media coordinator for the past year or two.
"It allows me to connect with my grandfather. I am named after him," Swab explained. "It was a way to keep his memory alive."
"It's also a really cool collection just to put up and display," he said.
Real trains
After spending his childhood with model trains and the plastic municipal buildings of Plasticville, Swab spent a year delving into some local train history.
His research project chronicling the rise of Baltimore's streetcar system was chosen for display at his college, Pennsylvania State University, where Swab has been a student since graduating from Edgewood High School's International Baccalaureate program in 2013.
Swab's work showed how the rise of Baltimore's early suburbs, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was fueled by expanding streetcar lines.
"Everyone looks at suburbanization as the growth of the highways, which it is," Swab said, but he noted the streetcar companies also took advantage of the growing city by stretching routes far beyond Baltimore's borders at the time.
"The part that no one really knows about is the streetcars, which is no longer around," he said.
The project won Penn State's freshman award at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Undergraduate Poster Exhibition, chosen out of 45 entries to be displayed at the university for about a year.
"I started looking at it, really, during the IB program [at Edgewood High]," Swab explained about his interest in Baltimore suburbanization and streetcars.
During a recent interview at his home, Swab said he is also working on an animated online map that shows how five Baltimore neighborhoods grew alongside their respective streetcar lines.
"I am really excited about that because I have been working on this for a long time," he said. "I wanted to produce something that people could see."
Besides seeing his project displayed at the university, Swab, a human geography major, is hoping the research will help his future as considers going to graduate school.
He already made a short PowerPoint presentation on the streetcars to a group of grad students and professors in the geography department, he said.
Although the old streetcars of Baltimore stopped running in 1963 and are memorialized chiefly through the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Swab noted that rail-based transit has been making a comeback in the city, as it has around the country.
He pointed out the ongoing plans to build the east-west Red Line of the light-rail system from Woodlawn to the west of Baltimore through the city to John Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in the east. The project has slowly advanced, though not without controversy, particularly because of its estimated $3 billion cost to build.
"They want to bring back something that's not buses," he said. "It's kind of full circle of what's going on [with municipal transit]."
Swab said there also seems to be more interest in the field of digital humanities, lending more quantification to humanities such as English and history.
"I think it's fascinating," he said.
Still collecting
Swab still puts up his grandfather's Plasticville figures, as well as the new ones he collected, on his family's mantle from Thanksgiving until about New Year's.
"They were actually his toys when he was younger," Swab said of his grandfather.
His family "would give buildings to us as gifts," he noted.
Launched in 1947, Plasticville U.S.A. is still being distributed by Bachmann Trains, the Philadelphia-based company that created the line. Today's Plasticville kits are made in China, according to the online Antiques Almanac.
The pieces let collectors build the fictional town of Plasticville, filled with "landmarks" like Plasticville Bank, the Plasticville Airport and, of course, the Plasticville Police Department to, perhaps, patrol for crime around the railroad station.
(New buildings for sale on Bachmann Trains' website seem to have slightly more creative names, like Fairfield School and Dick's Auto Body Shop.)
Swab's collection consists of about 75 pieces, many in their original boxes in bins at Swab's Fallston home.
When he lays it out, he display fits on four 4-by-4-foot platforms, and Swab explained it is too large for him to show off the entire collection at his parents' house.
The display is joined by some Lionel trains, including, Swab pointed out, a replica of a train car from the local Ma & Pa Railroad.
"In some ways, it goes back to when you are little, you get Hot Wheels, you get toy trains, and you just play with them," Swab said about his ongoing love for trains and building model sets.
He said most antique stores sell one or two pieces, at higher prices. Although rarer Plasticville items can cost upward of $500, most can still be bought fairly cheaply, he said.
"I am still collecting Plasticville," Swab said. "It's just hard because, like I said, I don't have enough room to put everything out."
Nationwide interest in the plastic village was rekindled about 15 years ago, when someone contracted by Bachmann made five or six special new pieces under the name King Plasticville, Plasticville Collectors Association secretary and treasurer John Niehaus said.
The Plasticville Collectors Association, launched in 1999, has grown from 60 to more than 500 members.
Niehaus said Swab's participation is notable, as it is especially hard to get younger people interested in any collectibles.
"It's difficult with any hobby anymore," he said. "All of the various collectible hobbies are declining. We are a bit out of the ordinary in that we are continuing to add members."
Swab, for his part, stays dedicated to showcasing the Plasticville buildings and figures, and his parents like the connection to family history.
"When we got half a day on Wednesday [before Thanksgiving], I would come home on Wednesday of Thanksgiving break and it would take me all the way to Saturday, working on it constantly, to get it all set up," Swab said.
Growing up with the world of Plasticville and model trains, Swab said, "was a lot of fun."