MUSEUM RAILROADS KIDS BIG AND SMALL

WE’re all kids at heart, and what kid – big or small – doesn’t like toy trains?

So next time you’re in the good ol’ U.S. of A, make it a must to take the family to San Diego in Southern California, don the train driver’s cap, and spend a captivating half day or more at what’s billed as “North America’s largest operating model railroad exhibit.”

And when closing time comes, try dragging the kids – let alone yourself – away from this amazing “train set” that covers 8000 square metres (which is bigger than a football field) and on which scores of tiny scale models of old-time and present-day steam engines, modern diesels, historic electric trolley cars, and hundreds of passenger carriages and freight wagons, rattle along more than two kilometres of tracks.

And watch as they disappear into cavernous cuttings, switch green signal lights to red as they roll by, clicketty-clack over replica steel bridges and timber trestles, cross remarkably detailed country-side, speed through rural rail stations and sidings, shunt their freight cars into vast goods yards, and ease themselves into replica cities and towns that are complete down to scale models of people and cars, office buildings, houses, shops, movie theatres, industrial plants – even a miniature scrap metal yard.

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum is in fact five separate model railways operated by five of the city’s model railroad clubs. Four of their model layouts are micro-copies of actual rail scenarios in O, HO and N scale, while the fifth is a “Toy Train Gallery” with several lines on which tin-plate and plastic trains from makers such as Lionel rattle around emitting sounds of puffing steam engine sounds, diesel horns and whistles, and even belch smoke.

There’s even a “kid’s eye level” from which children can push buttons to operate a coal mine section of this railway…

And on the four major layouts the detail amazes: club members go out on location to photograph areas to be modelled, calculate to within a few metres the length and depth of valleys, heights of hills, widths of rivers, creeks and harbours, the radius of sweeping real-life rail curves, and even note the numbers of trees and topographical colours and vegetation that they will come back and replicate in exact detail.

One remarkable timber trestle bridge on the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railroad HO gauge exhibit is a faithful reproduction of the actual Goat Canyon trestle in Mexico’s Carriso Gorge; its 3-metres high and nearly three long, and took over two years to design and build.

On the HO gauge Southern Pacific-Santa Fe exhibit modelers have recreated in such astonishing detail the famous “Tehachapi Loop” in the Sierra Nevada Mountains – where the railroad zig-zags up a hillside and has been described by the hobby’s premier magazine “as one of the most spectacular scenes in model railroading.”

(Look on this one for a 56-waggon freight train that has four model diesel engines hauling from the front, and two pushing from the rear to get it up the hill!)

And watch on the N scale (the smallest gauge) Pacific Desert Line exhibit, trains and scenery so faithfully replicated that visitors can be forgiven for thinking they have found themselves time-warped back to the settlements and citrus groves of 19th century San Diego County…

And on the 500 square metre 0 scale (the original model railway gauge) Cabrillo South Western exhibit, not only is there plenty of replica steam and diesel train action in the mountains, but also running models of historic 1940s San Diego tram and trolley cars.

The San Diego Model Railroad Museum can be found in the city’s Balboa Park, a vast cultural centre with fifteen museums, a diversity of performing arts venues, botanical gardens and the world-famous San Diego Zoo.

The Museum also has a Gift Shop with toys, books, videos, DVDs, caps and T-shirts for the rail buff, and a rail and railway modelling Museum and Library.

It is open Tuesdays to Fridays 11am to 4pm and to 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is $6 for adults, and free for children under 15 years.

Check it out at www.sdmrm.org ; for general information about San Diego’s other attractions go to www.sandiego.org