Abandoned Architect's House with a Toy Train Track Through the Walls

The man who owned this house was an architect who lived past 100, had a road named after him, and served as president of his village for more than 20 years. I know that because some old checks in the house led me to his story. His son passed away first, his wife passed away in about 2018, and he passed away in 2019 at the age of 102.

His name and the location stay off this page. The house sits in the woods, and what’s left of it has a toy train track running through the upstairs. My guess is that it was left empty around 2005, possibly after their son died, although I couldn’t find the year of his death.

What we found

The first thing I pointed out was a very old computer monitor. I said other people had obviously been here, but not in a while.

On the floor were small telephone books dated 2005 to 2006. That told me this hasn’t been abandoned that long. The door to a staircase wouldn’t open at first, and it turned out the wood had expanded. Otherwise the house is pretty much empty. Still kind of cool, though.

Then we found the track. It went through the wall, and there’s an attic. I said I’d never seen that before. It’s old school train stuff, 90s stuff, with parts laying around. We tried names for the place. The old train house, the train mansion, and then the spooky haunted train mansion, which got a laugh. One of us wasn’t sure it was a track at first, until we saw it on the ground. It went through the house. That would have been a kid’s dream.

Further on, somebody asked if it was a control room, and there were switches. We looked for another way in and couldn’t find one, so the guess was a crawl space reached the same way we walked in at first. I forgot my light, and I didn’t bring my setup with the mic and everything, so for part of this I borrowed a light for the video.

Downstairs was the garage. It had an old stove and a griddle system in the back, and cobwebs with spider eggs in them. I said that’s how long it’s been since somebody walked through. The kitchen stove was all tipped over, and the garage was wide open.

The last place we hadn’t been was up a set of stairs, and I used the word stairs loosely. It was a separate attic, not the one with the controls, with speakers on the wall and an old crutch. There was also a small piece of glass for a light that I first took for a China bowl. One bathroom was pretty, and I said so.

Why a house like this sits empty

After an owner dies, the estate has to be settled. Illinois Legal Aid Online describes that as collecting the person’s property, paying debts and giving what is left to the right people. Only a representative can deal with the property, either an executor named in a will or an administrator a court appoints. The same page says settling an estate can take months or longer, especially when real estate or disputes are involved.

That explains why a house can sit for a while after a death. It doesn’t explain this one by itself. The phone books suggest the house was empty well before 2018 and 2019, so my guess is the family had walked away years earlier. The checks only told me how the story ended.

I took some photos and a few TikToks before we left, and I never did figure out how you get to the train controls.