Toy Trains

I’ve had trouble finding time to blog lately, what with a heavy workload, Christmas tasks, and so on, but I’ll try to do better. Yesterday Ellen and I visited this train museum near our home. We’d been to it when it first opened some years ago, and after our ride on a real steam train recently, Ellen thought she’d like to get her father’s train set out of storage and see if it will run. We thought a visit to this shop might be helpful for tips and ideas.

The setup is pretty large, with at least five tracklines running at the same time, and lots of trains on the walls, too. We enjoyed seeing it again, and the proprietor, Mr. Jones, was happy to talk trains with us. His setup is all “S” gauge American Flyer trains. He gave us some advice about our set, which I hope to write about and show here at Christmastime.

It was hard to get pictures of the trains in motion, as the light level is not the best for that, but it’s a great setup.

Lots of accessories and signage.

Mr. Jones told us about the evolution of the American train makers over the years. This is a fairly new Lionel train, now made in China. Unfortunately we learned that Flyertown will be closing at the end of this year, at least as a public museum. It’s become too costly to run, mainly due to insurance costs, so Mr. Jones will be returning to a private train buff then. If you have a chance to visit south Jersey before the end of the year, Flyertown in Clermont is worth a visit.