Neighborhood. Besides the trolley that emerged from behind Mister Rogers to zip off to the Neighborhood of Make Believe, as it turns out the diorama of the neighborhood seen in the opening and closing segments of the program were model railroad models themselves. While there were earlier versions of the neighborhood, the one that is probably most familiar is the one that existed on the show from about 1974 through 1995. Interestingly enough most were slightly modified model kits that were quite common to model railroaders at the time. At left, we see the house where Fred Rogers welcomed us into his world.
Now, look at the picture at right. Look familiar? That’s because the house is nothing more than a Cape Cod-style house that was part of Bachmann’s Plasticville USA series of structures. Other than switching the porch to the other side of the house, it appears that a coat of paint is the only other change done. Another iconic building is this 4-story red brick building with the offset slanted roof, the so-called “NET Building” by fans of the show. In older episodes before 1970, an earlier iteration of this building had the letters "NET" on the back of it as a credit to National Educational Television networks. When NET changed to PBS, they changed the look of the building to remove the NET but the general shape of the distinctive roof remained. This particular structure was built by modifying two AHM Ramsey Journal Building kits by stacking them on top of each other and modifying the building to have a slanted roof.
Here are three kit box images showing the original structure. The new roof and taller height disguises the origin fairly well, but compare the window pattern on the wall and it is a dead giveaway. As we can see, The Steel City Coupler – September 2013 8