Day Three: Greeley CO, and the Freight Station Train Museum

IIRC we traveled to GREELEY of the morning the Convention seminars started.  Greeley was only a short drive from the hotel eastward on Rte. 34.  When you get to the MUSEUM you see a rather nondescript metal building adjacent to the train station. 
Once inside the place is chocked full of a model railroad layout, and tons of memorabilia. On the walls you can find antique timetables, train lanterns, railroad uniforms - the list goes on and on. But the layout is the star of the show. 
Fater you pay a small entrance fee the cashier tells the children they they have a sort of  scavenger hunt. she tells them that somewhere on the layout 7 dinosaurs are hidden. The page they give also list a number of other things to find on the layout.  Now you would think that finding dinosaurs in a train layout should be fairly easy. Not so! They were actually pretty tough to find! Pete was able to find all the items on the layout and he did find (with some help from Mom and Dad) 5 of the dinosaurs. The cashier said that if the kiddie asks nicely a volunteer would help them. I think Pete needed help with the last two dinosaurs, but all they would do is give general hints. You still had to look ... hard.
 We spent about 1 1/2 hours there, but a real railroad buff could easily spend the entire day!

Here's my son with a small part of the layout. In the back you can see a red caboose. It was said this is the last wooden caboose. More of this next.

This is a shot of the inside of the caboose. Pete is sitting in the observation "tower." In there are bunks for at least two (short) guys, a pot belly stove for heat and to cook on, and and many places for storage.

This shows the amount of detail the layout has. The entire layout is constructed to the same level of detail.

Here's a little vignette of a building on fire, with a number of firetrucks and firmen around. There is a push button that when pressed starts a red and orange blinking light, starts smoke and has the firetrucks lights blinking.

 One more fire related vignette. This time a forest fire. I dedicate this to the Yarnell 19 that perished in a wild fire in AZ.

Of course being a train layout, I owe it to you to have at least one train picture! ;)

Our visit had to come to an end as there was a seminar at the convention Pete and I really wanted to hear. We had enough time to stop for some lunch and then head back to the convention.

More tomorrow...