Day 5.062: Tunnels, trains, typewriters and telephones

Yesterday, we took a drive in the sunshine to North Adams, MA where we shunned the wonderful MASS MoCA to explore some history just across the river. An old rail yard has been converted into the rather understated but extravagantly-named, Western Gateway Heritage State Park.

Our first stop was at the Freight Yard Pub where we had a rather nice lunch and our first train encounter - E5N1 in particular happily watched the model train circle above the bar both while waiting for and eating his food.

Then we tackled the Visitor's Museum.  This was a very interesting history of the area including a large section on the digging of the nearby Hoosac Tunnel.  It also included the second model railway and an opportunity to teach Exile #4 and E5N1 about clocking-in and the size of radios.

It was in danger of being a bit dry for the kids, so we were pleased to get out without incident - not that there was anyone else there apart from the man at the desk.  He told us that the 'other museum' was just opening in the building across the yard so we wandered over.

The 'other museum' is run by the North Adams Historical Society and is called the North Adams Museum of History and Science.  It is as wide-ranging as its name suggests.

There are such historical novelties as a Super 8 projector (most of my youth was recorded on Super 8, so it's a slight shock to realise that it really is a museum-piece now) and, amongst many other things, a collection of typewriters revealing the many and varied twists that existed on the basic QWERTY layout.

Importantly, there were two excellent areas of hand-on activities, loosely speaking a historical one and a scientific one.  The popular items in the former were two typewriters and a collection of rotary-dial telephones.  Here is Exile #3 getting to grips with dialing:



The 'science' area upstairs contained some electrical construction toys as well as some novel glove puppets:

It was next to this major model railway layout based on an early 20th century map of the rail yard:

It's still a work-in-progress but clearly a labor of love to the friendly man who showed it to us and already quite impressive even if, as Exile #3 suggested, the unpainted river looks like strawberry ice-cream.

From there we went up again (preceded by the railway enthusiast who needed to switch on the lights for us) to the third floor where there is a bird's eye view of the railway layout (and the larger gauge train doing a circuit above it):

And in a side-room, a blacklight area where Copernicus and Einstein watched while we learned about the planets of the solar system and discovered the UV-revealed security features in our drivers licenses:

It's a fair way to travel over or around the mountains to get there, but we thoroughly enjoyed our visit - and since both these museums are free it would definitely be worth a side-trip if MASS MoCA or some other local attraction has already taken you to the area.