by Diana Day
Djuna thrills to the scale of the Sharp & Fellows #7 locomotive at Griffith Park’s Travel Town Museum
Photo by Dwayne Booth (a.k.a. Djuna’s Daddy)
We just got back from Travel Town in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park! It’s our favorite place to take our 2 1/2-year old daughters. This section from an article I wrote recently for the Daily Breeze, a local Southern California newspaper, sums up why we all thrill to the scale of Travel Town, a museum full of real trains on real tracks:
When our twins turned two, we took them to a seaside amusement park to celebrate. After about an hour of loud music, scary rides, gross hot dogs and tears, I turned to my husband and said to him, “Remind me. Why didn’t we go to Travel Town?â€
“It’s mellow, it’s peaceful. … It’s a nice, relaxing place to come with your family on the weekends,†said Kurt Ulbrich, operations manager of Travel Town Museum, located in Griffith Park. “It’s kind of a unique museum. … It’s more hands-on than your average museum,†he added.
Travel Town Museum has been a destination for Southern California children since its founding in 1952 by Los Angeles Recreation and Parks employee and rail enthusiast Charley Atkins. The museum is mostly outdoors, some of it under an elegant European-style pavilion, and boasts an impressive collection of authentic locomotives, freight cars, cabooses and more, dating from the late 1800s to the 1940s.
“It was originally considered to be a ‘railroad petting zoo.’ That’s what they actually referred to it as in correspondence,†said Tom Breckner, Management Analyst II of Travel Town Museum. …
“The scale of the locomotives is thrilling for kids,†Breckner said. “It’s something special to be in that space, to look through the windows and imagine yourself a railroader traveling down the tracks … that’s always something that will be accessible [at Travel Town],†he added.
Dinah and Djuna, since they have been able to walk, love to run alongside the huge trains, yelling, “Trains! Trains!” They love being boosted up into the great engines and to look out the windows at all the friendly park patrons below.
In an increasingly virtual world, it’s a great opportunity for kids to experience a real train in a full-on sensory environment, to balance little sneakers on real train tracks.
And even though the giant scale is exciting, of course the girls love something just their size at Travel Town — the miniature train ride and the indoor play area complete with a Thomas the Tank Engine train table.
And they don’t mind the hot dogs either.