11th Annual Train Festival

One New Year's Day, we went to see the Train Festival. It was held at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. The weather was dreary, but we forgot all about it once we entered the museum. The museum is build next to the historic Union Station and is connected by bridge to the new Amtrak and Sounder station. It has four floors and each floor had train exhibits.

The first floor had ridable steam engines from Kitsap Steamers. The second floor had a Lionel display with two trains running - including Thomas with Annie and Clarabel. The third floor had a large N-Scale railroad setup as well as a permanent HO-Scale layout representing Tacoma, Auburn, and Stampede Pass modeled in the 50's. And the fourth floor had Lego trains for the kids to build and play with.

The permanent HO-Scale display was truly amazing. I'm pretty sure I've never seen such a fabulous and detailed layout in my life. Nearly every model was a custom-built, accurate representation of the real object, with photos taken from the time period for comparison. I had the good fortune to talk to one of the layout designers. He gave me lots of pointers about the route and route building in general. The only display that I've seen that is comparable is the layout at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA, but it is Lionel scale and therefore not as realistic.

We ate lunch at the bagel deli next door, then went back into the museum to let Andrew play with the Lego trains again. Finally, it was time to go. Andrew wasn't too happy about that, but once we were outside, he found puddles and had great fun splashing his way to the car.