All Aboard!

During our recent trip to Sacramento, Jaxon and I visited the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento. Dad agreed to join us and be subjected to Jaxon's innate fascination with all things transportation, especially trains!

If you have not visited the California State Railroad Museum (http://www.csrmf.org/default.asp), it is run by the California State Parks and is probably the best train museum in North America. I frequented this place as a kid whenever we had visitors from out of town and I always had a ball. The museum features many refinished railroad cars of different types as well as special exhibits that rotate on a regular basis.

Downstairs we looked into an old steam engine. I couldn't believe how many levers, switches, knobs, and gauges there were. They even had the coal furnace open so that you could look down into it. That was Jaxon's favorite part and he kneeled on the edge looking down until I finally dragged him away, waving to the volunteer engineer as we left. On the other side of the museum there is an old dining car and sleeping car. The sleeping car was always my favorite since it had been put on rockers so that the car seemed to be in motion as you walked through it. They had even rigged the windows so that it appeared to be nighttime and sporadically lights would flash to make it appear you were going by a crossing guard. Jaxon liked that so much we had to make two trips through it, once with me and once with Dad.

As luck would have it, they had a Thomas the Train exhibit, complete with play area for children. After visiting the bottom floor and seeing lots of trains, we headed upstairs to the Thomas exhibit and model train exhibit.

Jaxon immediately took to pushing the various Thomas train cars around the bolted in track and over bridges. He managed to share nicely with the other, older children there and after Dad and I had rested for a while on a mock cargo container, we asked Jaxon if he was ready to leave. Dumb question for a 2-year-old. We received an answer of adamant head nodding (the N-O direction of course) and hand waving. We left him to play for a few minutes more and then I had to literally drag him away yelling and kicking. Ahhh, the wonders of a 2-year-old. :)

We headed over to the model train exhibit which immediately ended the tantrum and he "oohed" and "ahhed" over the various model trains that were running on the track that day. One of the trains even had a camera attached to the front of it that fed to a video monitor that we could see. If Jaxon stood in the right place, we could see him on the camera as the train rounded the corner. Pretty cool stuff.

After a quick tour through the gift shop (with nothing purchased I might add) we headed out for some lunch. We had a great time and Jaxon was able to test his skills as an engineer.