All Aboard!

Since last June when Darren and I moved out of our loft and into our townhouse in West County, we have wanted to visit the Museum of Transportation.  Located just down the road from where we live, we have driven past this little gem numerous times while taking the winding back roads to dinner dates, etc.  Needless to say, when we saw the sign that it would be free to the public on Father's Day, we made our plans to finally pay it a visit.

Upon entering the gate, you're immediately greeted with various means of --you guessed it--transportation.  There's an Air Force jet to your right, hundreds of railway cars ahead, some older fire trucks tucked back in the trees, and over the hill a tug boat sits next to a bomber.

Inside the first museum building, we walked into a circus-themed room with the history of circus cars around the walls, complete with a model circus train running in the center.  If you've seen 'Water for Elephants' or 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,' you'll remember that circuses used to travel via train.  It was cool to see how circus travel has changed over the years.

We also saw one of the first streetcars in St. Louis, which was the first exhibit in the museum.  There's an area north of  STL called Bellefontaine, which is why this car was named as it was.  I've heard rumors that they will be bringing streetcar tours back to STL... you can bet Darren and I will be some of the first people on that list! I've never been in a streetcar but they look like a lot of fun.

The building also housed some of the older fire engines that St. Louis used.  Did you know that it was the law to have a bucket out on your front porch at all times in case one of the houses near you caught on fire? This "bucket brigade" was to help put fires out quickly with buckets of water, since the fire fighting system wasn't as sophisticated or efficient as it is today.

We walked along the path for the tour train that you could ride and found ourselves inside another building, this time full of classic cars.  As you can imagine, I'm not much of a car guru, but even I could tell that some of these automobiles were high-priced classics.  Here's one of my favorites, especially since they posed it at a Route 66 Drive-In (which apparently used to exist not too far away from where we were).

Out behind all the buildings it was like a train playground; car after car, engine after engine, all available for kids (and adventurous adults) to go inside and explore.  Darren and I enjoyed seeing different cars: Monsanto, Post Office, Canadian, Missouri Kansas Texas Line, etc.  Here's one I decided to climb into for fun (and yes, I was tempted to reenact the scene from Indiana Jones where he jumps off the train onto his horse, but I don't have a horse and I love Darren too much to do that to him).

All in all it was very fun to explore this museum that we'd been driving past for over a year now. It seems like a fun place to bring kiddos so they can run around and play amidst the history of all kinds of transportation.