We visited the Model Train Museum, open for a few hours every Sunday afternoon. I was floored by the size of the place. Think of all the train fire house gardens you have seen. Put them all in one building. This was bigger than that. They had an entire warehouse filled with trains of different sizes. Each was immaculate.

There is a large community of active people in model trains. There are all manor of kits and items available to people who are into trains. The picture below is of a small scale train garden. If you look closely, there is a house in the lower left corner., This house was put together from a kit. Each piece was laser cut from an appropriate material. The gentleman is holding the skeleton of the house kit. He said it took about 40 hours to assemble the house.

A sidelight that most people didn’t pay attention to was the Erector Set. As a kid, I had a marvelous Erector Set. It came in a metal box. It had separate compartments for each of the parts. There was a booklet with all manor of things one could build. Mine even came with an electric motor. I had a fantasy of building the carousal. I didn’t even have a fraction of all the parts required. It’s just as well. I also didn’t have the skill to assemble such a complicated project. The Erector Set gave me many hours of fun.

The best part was how available the train gardens were. The Erector Set items were on a high shelf safely out of touch. But the trains were readily available. Children wandered the aisles with the help of stools that made it easy for them to see. It was also easy to touch, but everybody respected the exhibits. There were no plexiglass panels to protect the trains.

What a surprising throwback!