Foley Alabama Railroad Mueseum

Summerdale Alabama

Today was a very interesting day. The adventure destination was the Railroad Museum in Foley, Alabama. Thanks to being able to go during the week the traffic was light and the attendance just right. The park where the museum is located in directly on the main highway 59 that goes through town. The park is very relaxing and fairly beautiful. Some folks were enjoying the benches, coffee and their newspapers in one of the gardens areas on this fine cool but sunny day. Since my arrival was earlier than the museum opened I strolled about the park to satisfy my inquisitive mind. Many trees and a few small gardens had bronze metal signs dedicating the tree or garden to a loved one. This was a wonderful thing to do in memory of someone.

The main railroad museum is the first building you come to as you enter the park. It is very attractive and extremely well designed to fit into the theme of the museum. The model railroad that I mainly came to see is in a rear building. As you walk up to the entrance of the museum you see a train at the siding.

It is set up so you can walk all around and into a lot of it. The Caboose is what you come to first and the doors are locked but the windows are unblocked so you can see inside through the glass. The living conditions seem a little primitive to me.

As I wandered along the track past the cars I arrived at the ENGINE. This is an early diesel engine, but it is still HUGE. The little house for the engineer and fireman is open and you can go inside. It was so small that I was unable to get the camera to focus at the close range. Upon examination of the control systems it was obvious the OSHA had not come into governing work environments when this engine was built. The engineers chair was very cramped with all kind of protrusions that could cut or pinch during ordinary operations. I tried sitting in the seat to get a feel of what an engineer could see. I doubt that he could see the tracks closer to the engine than a few hundred yards out in front. The visibility was terrible. A neat side line on this is the hotel across the street was being decorated for Christmas and you can see it in the background of the shot of the engine.

After all that excitement, I meandered over to the model railroad building hoping it would be fairly nice. Little did I understand the dedication of these folks. It was an eye popper to see. According to the men in charge, it was originally the work of one man and had SEVEN levels of tracks. They had to cut it back to fit into the building that the club could fit it into. It is full of lots of cute items like a still in the trees with a reveenoer climbing a tree to get away from a bear. Many of the building scenes in the layout have activities of their own. The fire house can come to life go into action. A diner does a good business while the car wash is washing cars. A fire event in one of the buildings has fire engines and police cars and all kinds of things going on. “Toy Trains” have come a long way since my trains that are stored at my sisters house. There were 14 tracks running and the controllers used hand held remote control do hickeys that looked like television remote controls to control all the train activity. It appeared that there did exist a panic button to shut it all down at once if needed. The video of this original setup showed the original owner and all the steps that went into the original. You had to have some real money to do what was done. It was impressive.
By the time I left the model area it was lunch time so I headed home. After lunch I decided the bugs had been on the truck and my home long enough so I started in cleaning them off the rig. After 2 ½ hours I called it quits until my bum shoulder s could recover and quit hurting. Since I have been so good at not spending a bunch on diesel these last few days I was going to treat myself to the restaurant of fame in Foley. Lamberts, Home of the Throwed roll. The line must have been 30 yards long and no place is good enough for me to wait an hour or so to get into to eat. On the way home, A Chinese Buffet caught my attention with their ONE YEAR IN BUSINESS sale. Turns out the owner is the cook (chef) and the food was very good. I had 5 different types of shrimp and other wondrous delicacies.
The other good news is I am now signed up with Adsense for this blog so hopefully this Sprint Aircard for Internet service can start earning its own way with the income from ad sense. For those that do not know about this, when someone clicks and add on my blog, I will get a few pennies of income. Most active blogs with ad sense get under $50 a month but ever little bit can help. Tomorrow I move to Gulf State Park at the beach, but my Internet connection is an unknown at this time. I will try to get stuff posted one way or another.
Time to get busy and have toooo much fun, TheOFM