Railroad Museum

 While waiting for our train rides at the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, we visited their museum.  It turned out to be an amazing attraction in itself, not just something to do while waiting.

While the walls of the museum are filled with thousands of historic engines and cars for model railroads in various gauges, the central attraction is a gigantic O27 gauge layout.  The layout itself is twenty-four by forty feet…we figure this to be as wide as and eight feet longer than our entire garage apartment building at home!

Not only is the overall layout fantastic in its dimensions, the tiny details kept amazing us.  There was a tiny brush fire in the woods being put out by the fire department.  The police car that stopped a speeder had tiny blinking blue and red lights. The figure of a welder wearing a mask actually had a torch that emitted blue flame at intervals.  There were too many to name.

There was even a drive-in theatre with a movie being projected in real time.  

By looking at the control panel at the end, it was possible to see that there were seven separately wired track systems so that seven trains could be simultaneously running without any possible contact with each other.  It must be something to operate this layout.

If you have a chance to ride the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, be sure that you take time to adequately visit the museum…it is very much worth the time spent there.