Balboa Park in San Diego, CA Part 5 & 6 of 7

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Back to Balboa Park to see more museums today.  It is another gorgeous day!

On our walk in from the parking lot, we saw the Japanese Garden.  This picture and the one below are a couple of views from above the garden.

The first museum of the day was the Model Train Museum. 
At 28,000 square feet, the museum is the world's largest operating model railroad museum. This unique museum contains four enormous scale and model layouts, built by separate clubs, which depict railroads of the Southwest in O, HO, and N scales. In addition, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum features a Toy Train Gallery with an interactive Lionel layout for children and state-of-the-art theater lighting.

This is a mighty large model, don't you think?!

This is one quarter of this particular display.  There were several huge set-ups.

The pit area was large and very sophisticated.

Look at this intricate train truss.

This junk yard was part of one of the displays.  We were impressed of all the various parts that could be detected.

The top shelf shows the various sizes of 2 track model trains made.
The train on the bottom shelf that you can't see very well is a 3 track train.

This is one quarter of another display.  Amazing!

The detail in just this section of the display is typical of all the displays.

Here is a closeup of the hill in the back of the picture above.

There was even a huge shipyard.

Here is a large train station.

As the sign on the wall says, these represent New York, New Haven and Hartford.

This display starts on level 1 and continues on level 2. It is a true replica of a 27 miles of actual track.  This two-level layout represents the joint Southern Pacific / Santa Fe railroad from Bakersfield to Mojave, California, of the 1950s, including the Tehachapi Loop. The model is unique for its size and geographic fidelity. Thousands of photographs of the prototype were used to closely model the details of the actual area with nearly curve-for-curve and switch-for-switch accuracy.

Doesn't this picture look like a real train.  This is a part of the 27 mile replica.

This is another view farther up the track.

We are now on the second level of the 27 mile replica.

One of the engineering feats of its day, the Loop was built by Southern Pacific Railroad to ease the grade over Tehachapi Pass. Construction began in 1874, and the line opened in 1876. Contributors to the project's construction include Arthur De Wint Foote and the project's chief engineer, William Hood.

Rising at a steady 2% grade, the track gains 77 feet (23 m) in elevation in the Loop. A train more than 4,000 feet (1,200 m) long passes over itself going around the loop. At the bottom of the loop, the track passes through Tunnel 9, the ninth tunnel built as the railroad worked from Bakersfield.

 The Loop talked about above is at the far end of this picture.

This is a closeup of the Loop.  There was an actual aerial photo of this loop, but it would not photograph well.  Very close in appearance.

This is part of the toy train display.  I asked what the difference between a toy train and a model train was.  I was told that model trains are to scale and the toy trains are not.  The cities in this part of the toy display are very detailed with lots of fun things happening.

Our next museum will be in a separate post.