Roadside America is laid out in one big room, nearly 8,000 square feet of running trains, hand-built buildings, and tiny people, with walkways around the perimeter. There are lots of buttons to push to get mechanical things to work, trains to move, or lights to blink. The overhead observation deck is for parents, and has its own set of buttons. Tip: If you spot a particularly bratty kid, you can drive him crazy by shadowing him from above and pushing all the buttons first.

Every aspect of normal life is arrayed in town squares, parks, and railway stations -- though you won't find any pawn shops or tattoo parlors. This is a hallucination of a sanitized America -- Gieringer's happy vision. In fact, since Gieringer died in 1963, nothing has been added and the march of history comes to parade rest, circa 1960.

Of special note is the underground portion of the layout, where you can play tiny tourist and visit Luray Caverns or a coal mine. And the climax of any trip to Roadside America is the every-half-hour Sound and Light show. Night falls over the sleepy town, and a patriotic multimedia slide show illuminates one wall. Over the decades, the color has been accidentally cooked out of the show, which runs on six 1950s style projectors that each hold one slide. It is nonetheless moving when the washed-out images of the Statue of Liberty, Jesus, and the American flag are juxtaposed as music plays, "America the Beautiful." It is indeed, and tiny.

There are other giant train layouts and miniature towns around the U.S., but few have the grandness of Roadside America's vision, its mastery of billboard skill, nor as good a name.