In California, ride rails on kid-friendly scale
COMING around the curve, my son excitedly pointed at the red wooden bridge crossing over a small creek.
“Look, Mumpa,” Zephyr said, collectively referring to his mother and me.
We were all aboard a miniature train looping around a woody patch of Griffith Park, 4,210 acres of greenery situated in the heart of north-west Los Angeles. In front of us, the cheery cherryred, propane-fuelled Stanley Diamond engine chugged along, the engineer occasionally tooting its whistle. After crossing the bridge, we momentarily passed out of the bright sunshine into a short tunnel before whizzing through a mock Western town.
This late-morning railroad ride was the perfect amusement for our two-year- old son, as trains fascinate and delight him no end. Some mornings I awake with the imprint of a Thomas the Tank Engine on my face. Zephyr often brings his favourite toy locomotive to bed and, because he sleeps with us, it somehow always ends up between my cheek and the pillow during the course of the night. Downstairs, our living room is ruled by an epic Brio-brand train table covered in wooden tracks, engines and train cars - plus plenty of plastic dinosaurs.
So when we started planning a week-long family trip to California, we decided to schedule several stops at trainrelated attractions. Our first destination was Griffith Park; Southern Railroad, which has been running miniengines, such as the Stanley Diamond that carried us, since the late 1940s.
Second on the itinerary was Travel Town Museum, located on the other side of Griffith Park, a 10-minute drive away. Although there’s another miniature train to be ridden there, we decided to simply walk through the outdoor collection. There are a dozen engines and nearly a dozen cars, as well as semi-related oddities, including a horse- drawn car and a San Francisco cable car.
A Baldwin steam locomotive from 1899 weighing an impressive 70 tons was front and centre in the rail yard that day. ( Trains move around the tracks that crisscross the property frequently, so there’s no map for the park, and not all pieces may always be on display.). Charcoalblack, its round face is bright silver that gleams in the midday sun. Number 664 once ran the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe route and has been a top draw here since it was donated more than 60 years ago. Although you can’t climb up into many of the behemoths, it was enough for Zephyr to simply stare up at the vintage iron horses, marveling at their size and the power emanating off them even in stillness.
There are small educational installations dotting the park, including an indoor collection dubbed “Hollywood on Track.” Photos, posters and memorabilia cover the walls and fill the cases. The park itself has become a location in a number of television shows, including “Knight Rider,” “Six Feet Under” and “CHiPS.”
Nearby, a small - at first glance - gift shop was chock-full, nearly floor-to- ceiling. If I could do it over again, I would go in alone to avoid the inevitable meltdown that occurs when there are so many desirables that can’t be touched and won’t be bought. I couldn’t resist buying a limegreen steam tram named Zephius and a black engine branded with the park’s name that can run on Zephyr’s wooden tracks at home.
Two days later, and two hours to the south, the next stop on our California Express was the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. Boasting 27,000 square feet of layouts, the collection is in a basement space inside the city’s culture-rich Balboa Park. There are plenty of dioramas and historical exhibits for adult Casey Jones wannabes, but the toy train gallery is the best option for little ones.
Volunteer members of the San Diego 3-Railers bring their own trains to operate while overseeing a sprawling 42-foot by- 44-foot diorama with four separate tracks looping around it. The kinetic scene encompasses both town and country. Cars run on the roads, characters move in some scenes, lights flash, horns beep and smoke puffs out of some of the train engines.
One portion of the display was at Zephyr’s eye level. There’s a button to push that moves a Thomas the Tank Engine around the tracks. Zephyr probably pushed it a hundred times in our half-hour visit. Upstairs there is a whole playroom devoted to the little blue locomotive, but we didn’t have the opportunity to check it out.
Guess we’ll be heading back there the next time we find ourselves in San Diego.
The final destination on our tour was Legoland, half an hour north of San Diego in Carlsbad. Admittedly, this stop was just as much for my inner child as it was for my child. — WP-Bloomberg