TOWN OF TONAWANDA — Things are finally back on track for the Model Railroad Club of Buffalo.

After a long hiatus due to renovations at its site at the Boys and Girls Club of the Tonawandas, the club will host its first open house in more than three years this weekend and next weekend.

“We’re still putting it back together, adjusting, modifying, trying to get it to where we look at it and like it,”  Frank Olka, the club president, said of the extensive train layout. “As long as the trains are running, and they run reliably, we’ll be all right.”

The club, which started in 1936, is one of the oldest model railroad clubs in the country. The Tonawanda Boys & Girls Club, where it moved in the 1960s, is its fourth home.

When the Boys & Girl Club received a grant for new windows in 2009, many of the railroad layouts had to be removed for the changes. Things were expected to be restored relatively quickly.

It didn’t work out that way.

“We tore it out and started putting it back together, thinking, ‘We’ll have a show in 2009,’ ” said Jared Allison, the club secretary. “Now, three years later ...”

Reconstruction finally started again on the layouts last summer. During a recent tour of the club’s site, there was still a lot of work to be done, but that means visitors will actually get a better look at the construction of the layouts than they could before, Olka said.

“Before the renovations, the layout was over 90 percent complete, so you couldn’t see the open benchwork,” he said. “Now they’ll get a good appreciation of the work and time and effort that goes into it.”

Somewhat more than half of the club’s layouts are HO scale, which stands for “half-O scale.” (O scale is 1/48th scale, while HO is 1/87th scale.) Olka said that the club’s layouts were once all O-scale, but that changed as the smaller scale took on more popularity.

The HO half of the club layout is set loosely in the mid-1970s in Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh area. However, the mix of trains means there are often older and more modern ones running side by side, Olka said.

Points along the track include train yards, a steel mill, “The City” (featuring a full downtown with buildings, bridges, a scrapyard with real metal shavings and other businesses, including some with local names), an endcap with colorful fall foliage and the towns of Bristol (with a gorge area in construction, carved of foam insulation and awaiting its layers of plaster and landscaping) and Baker, named after a late club member.

During the open houses, Olka will be up in a dispatch booth overlooking the area with a two-way headset, keeping everything running smoothly.

“When you have a dozen trains going in different directions,” he said, “you have to make sure you have a kind of flow.”

Allison, who mainly works on the O-scale side of the room, said that section is set in a slightly earlier time period, about the 1950s, and is “located” in rural Pennsylvania. Its features include a trolley line (run off overhead wires) between two towns, and a tall ship in a harbor ... and many scenes including miniature people barely the size of a fingernail, with swimming holes, lumber yards and playgrounds.

Some of the construction of this section dates back to the earlier days of the club ... and some of the buildings were constructed completely from scratch by older club members, Allison said.

“They’re very unique and each structure took a lot of time to put together,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of taking them out of the box and snapping them together.

“And when the club started, you literally had to construct everything, because no one sold it.”

Modeling of this sort, both the buildings and the scenery, is still a big part of the club’s activities. Signs in the O-scale layout offer directions on “How to build a tree-covered mountain” and other items, and Allison said it’s a big draw for many people.

“It’s not like we’re done and we’re just running trains now,” he said.

Club member Ken Carlson, who did a lot of the layouts’ carpentry, said that there’s something for everyone in the hobby. While some enjoy the modeling, others mainly enjoy running the trains and others — like himself — enjoy working on the underpining of the structures. He noted that the club’s space at the Boys & Girls Club is also open at 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday night for those who might like to take a look.

“We want to pull people in,” he said. “We’re always looking for new members.”

In addition to the hobby itself, there’s a social aspect, Allison said.

“It’s good to have the club, where it’s not just someone working in their attic or basement with a flashlight and magnifying glass,” he said. “It makes it a lot more fun.”