Welcome to the Hotel California

We spent Saturday in San Diego at a Model Train Museum. Levi insisted on riding the little train in Balboa Park, so here's everyone loaded on the train and ready to go:

Going through the tunnel was pretty exciting:)

back at the train station

Here's one of the huge model layouts at the museum. Different displays are built and maintained by various model train clubs and they are replicas of real train lines.
The San Diego & Arizona Eastern is the HO scale (1/87th actual size) layout of the San Diego Model Railroad Club. The SD&AE models the prototype railroad of the same name connecting San Diego with El Cajon and El Centro. The San Diego - San Ysidro and San Diego - El Cajon portions are now part of the San Diego Trolley. This layout features an impressive 10 ft. high model of the Carriso Gorge (north of Jacumba in eastern San Diego County) and the Goat Canyon trestle. The actual trestle was the largest timber railroad trestle in the world at the time of its construction in 1932. Because of the rough terrain, the SD&AE has been coined "The Impossible Railroad".

Here's the family watching the locomotives in the "toy train" exhibit.
This gallery features operating toy trains of "Lionel type" 3-Rail O gauge. The San Diego 3-Railers Club has recently completed a new 42 by 44 foot permanent layout that has four separate main lines, realistic scenery, and many operating accessories. Club members control the trains with modern remote control systems. The trains come equipped with realistic engine sounds, horn, whistle, and smoke. An operating camera car broadcasts a color image to a television screen to give visitors an "engineer's view" of the layout. Also, there is a coal mine section of the layout at "kid's eye level" where children can push buttons to operate the coal trains.