Summer "Trains" Week

All Aboard!  
We had a great time talking about trains this week!

First, let me introduce you to a few books we found and loved.

Trains : Steaming! Pulling! Huffing! by Patricia Hubbell.  This is a cute children's rhyming book that describes the characteristics of various kinds of trains.








The Berenstain Bears All Aboard! by Jan & Mike Berenstain.   The Bears are on a steam train trip across Bear country. Mama and Papa enjoy the scenery but the cubs want to learn about the train.  We loved how this book talks about how the workers contribute to the train ride experience, and about all that you can see from a train.  It is fun to see that their dreams for the future resembled my own as a kid.





What better way to learn about trains than to go see them!  I took the kids to The Golden Spike Museum.   Even though I knew ahead of time that one of the engines would be in for it's monthly cleaning, it was still the best day of the week for us to get there.  So though we didn't get the full experience with both of the engines participating, it was still really fun checking out the train and museum.

  
 I love the sound of the Steam Engine's whistle!  We saw the 119 Engine. (The Jupiter was in for a boiler wash.)  We showed up just in time to see the train coming from the engine house.

In the visitor center we watched This is America Charlie Brown: The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad.  We learned a lot about how this was accomplished, and why the gold spike was so important.   Train travel linked the prosperous East Coast to the wide open ranges and new opportunities on the West Coast.  People no longer had to use bulky (and slow) wagon trains to start a new life.  They could take the train.

We got to watch them shovel coal in the stove, and talk to the engineer and volunteer about how the engine works

 We ate lunch at the shaded picnic tables, and stayed long enough to watch the steam demonstration again  It was a good time!

Off the subject of trains for a moment...  Most little boys (and sometimes girls) at some point want to be an astronaut. They dream of rocketing into the stars and exploring the universe. So since we were in the neighborhood, we took a detour trip to the Morton Thiokol Rocket Display. (There are signs posted all along your way to the Golden Spike museum.)  This (free) rocket exhibit was near the main building; quite an impressive collection of rockets and (solid fuel) rocket motors.

 Each item has a plaque in front of it to explain what it is you're looking at. We saw small missiles all the way up to one of the rocket boosters for the space shuttle. To see the size of that booster, it was neat to realize it takes two of those things to get the shuttle off the ground. 

Standing tall in the center of the display are Minuteman and Trident C-4 missiles.