'Night of the Living Dead' display to be added to Carnegie Science Center's Miniature Railroad & Village

The latest addition to the Carnegie Science Center’s Miniature Railroad & Village will have a “Night of the Living Dead” theme.

The addition being unveiled later this month is a replica of the Evans City Cemetery chapel featured in the iconic zombie movie made in Western Pennsylvania. It was where the opening scene in which things go terribly wrong for characters Barbara and Johnny was filmed.

When “Night of the Living Dead” sound engineer Gary Streiner heard the nearly 100-year-old chapel was scheduled for demolition, he raised close to $50,000 to save and restore it as well as secure a historic designation.

Nicole Wilhelm, railroad and village manager of the Science Center’s Buhl Planetarium, said the scary theme has a lot to do with the time of year.

“We thought it would be fun to do a little addition that tied into Halloween and spooky stuff because we’re also updating all of the digital text panels that we have around the exhibit to feature unusual true crimes and spooky stories around Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania,” Wilhelm said. “This ties into that perfectly.”

And when it comes to attracting visitors, it doesn’t hurt to build something around a movie that people in Pittsburgh never seem to get tired of talking about.

“People are very excited about it,” Wilhelm said. “The miniature railroad itself is a historic representation of Southwestern Pennsylvania. The models that we choose always have some sort of cultural or historical significance to the area.”

The new model, which also will feature a little cemetery around it, will be installed Sept. 12. Zombies will be added to the scary scene in October for the Halloween season.

Wilhelm said that, according to her research, the chapel was used only for funerals. She was told by the Evans City Historical Society that before there was heavy machinery to dig graves, when the ground was frozen in winter, corpses would be stored in the basement of the church until the ground thawed enough to dig graves again.

“That’s a little spooky, and we may not advertise that to children. But if people are interested in learning more of the scary stuff, we will certainly tell them,” Wilhelm said.