Railroad buffs

[Iowa Dave]

Went through Sedalia Missouri twice in the past couple weeks. Route 63 goes right past the state of Missouri fairgrounds. The entryway corner has a section of railroad track with a couple cars and a very old locomotive and a cowboy sculpture scene in front of the train. One of the train cars looks like a caboose but is longer. On my second trip by I had time to look at the car and saw it was called a Drover car. I knew what drovers were and surmised correctly that cowboys escorted the livestock hauled in the slatted cattle cars. I’d never seen a Drover car before though. Must have been quite a life.

https://www.google.com/search?q=miss...YEADNIzKZ0AAAA

https://www.trains.com/trn/train-bas...overs-caboose/
Iowa Dave

[dfandrews]

Wow, Dave. You're gitin' quite edycated!!
The loco is a Frisco Northern. Not too old as steam power goes).
https://www.rgusrail.com/moslsf4516.html

[cpaharley2008]

Not too far from my home.....https://rrmuseumpa.org/collections/roster/

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by cpaharley2008

Not too far from my home.....https://rrmuseumpa.org/collections/roster/

Also in PA:
Steamtown: https://www.nps.gov/stea/index.htm


and East Broad Top: https://eastbroadtop.com/


(On our bucket list, if we can ever get across the Mississippi with our Escape!).

[John in Santa Cruz]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

Also in PA:
Steamtown: https://www.nps.gov/stea/index.htm


and East Broad Top: https://eastbroadtop.com/


(On our bucket list, if we can ever get across the Mississippi with our Escape!).

you probably already know that there is an excellent rail museum in Sacramento. They have among other many other things, the massive SP 4294, cab forward 4-8-8-2 on display.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by John in Santa Cruz

you probably already know that there is an excellent rail museum in Sacramento. They have among other many other things, the massive SP 4294, cab forward 4-8-8-2 on display.

Ah yes. 4294 - a beautiful locomotive: Built 1944, just over 1 Mil. lbs incl. tender, 124,300 lbs. tractive effort @ 250 psi steam. It was The solution to the long tunnels and snowsheds in the Sierras.
IMHO: if steam had held on another 10 years, I think that other western mountain RR's would have started using cab-forwards.

SP had some great stuff. Other favorites: the GS-series Northerns used on the Daylights, and of course the Gila-Monsters, the cab-in-back semi-streamlined AC-9's.


For those traveling anywhere near Sacramento, visit the CA State Railroad Museum. It is a treasure-trove (literally: gold nuggets on display!) of California history.

[John in Santa Cruz]

Another cool museum is the Western Railway Museum, featuring a large collection of old trolley cars, near Suisun City in the Sacramento River Delta....
https://www.wrm.org/

When I was a kid in SF in the 1960s, I rode some of those trolleys to/from school every day.

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by John in Santa Cruz

Another cool museum is the Western Railway Museum, featuring a large collection of old trolley cars, near Suisun City in the Sacramento River Delta....
https://www.wrm.org/

When I was a kid in SF in the 1960s, I rode some of those trolleys to/from school every day.

Thanks, John. I did not know of that one. It's definitely on the list,now. Key System and especially Sacramento Northern were on my modeling list at one time! ('til I figured out how much fine-motor-skills it took to model operation with overhead wire!)

[John in Santa Cruz]

If you are IN San Francisco, its worth a quick stop at the Cable Car Museum, San Francisco Cable Car Museum
and not that far away is the SF Railway Museum featuring the history of streetcars and trolleys in SF,
https://www.streetcar.org/museum/

[Steven M]

In Union, Illinois is the fine and very large collection of the Illinois Railway Museum, which runs on its track, steam, diesel and electric trains, trolleys, CTA 'L' cars and streetcars. https://www.irm.org/

[CindyL]

And a KOA near the Union Railway Museum with an old West town next door to the KOA. We camped there with Donna Dee once a few years ago. We took our train-crazy grandson's family to the museum and Old West Town. He was thrilled to see Thomas the Train who was at the museum that day and rode the hand pedal cars at the Old West town so much that he must have really ached the next day. We frequently winterize at this KOA, as it is just south of us in Woodstock, IL a few miles.

CindyL

[Iowa Dave]

I have a grandson who really likes trains also. He’s only three. I had a bunch of HO model stuff that a woman I worked for gave me to get it out of her basement. Most of it was brand new. I gave it to my son in law. Last Christmas he set up a small portion of it to encircle the Christmas tree. It was a big hit. I have found that most kids like trains. And an even larger percentage love to climb. Anything including curtains.
Iowa Dave

[CindyL]

Sam was crazy about trains. He never went anywhere without one in his hand and never talked of anything else, to the extent that we suspected autism. This went on for years, although in the last year, it has become Super Mario. Same thing though, only talks about Super Mario.

CindyL

[John in Santa Cruz]

mine was heavy into dinosaurs. could rattle off the proper name of dozens and dozens of obscure dinos when he was like 5. he managed to hang onto most of his collection of sorta-accurate scale plastic dinos, and when he was in grad school, they occupied the coffee table of his house, which was frequently the site of parties and which someone tagged as Marla Hot Springs on google maps, hah hah... others added some non-dinos to this table,
https://goo.gl/maps/3PGD6amPp6Unmhuh6

[Iowa Dave]

I’m trying to develop outdoor grandkids. I have one grandson coming along pretty good. Today my son and his wife came by with their 2 year old daughter. She had a new bug study kit in a bag. We went bug hunting in the yard and finished up with a conservation project of splitting milkweed pods in the prairie and releasing the feathered seeds for the Monarchs.
Had a nice lunch then it was time to go. In the pack out the bug cage got dropped and the race was on. Those big orange Millipedes are pretty fast. Although we had a big lunch my granddaughter apparently was still hungry and tackled a Wolf River apple that was still on the tree. I think I have another follower.
Iowa Dave