Trainland USA — An Iowa Surprise

When son Ben and his wife Cate joined us in Dallas in November, we took a side trip to nearby Frisco for Traintopia, the celebration of a man’s “million dollar” model train set. Pictures are in an earlier blog post.

This week, when we came to Iowa, Ben and Cate took us to the Iowa version. Open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, “Trainland USA” is a massive train layout that includes continuous overlapping scenes from every portion of the USA. The original setup took 4.5 years from a group of 32 people, and has now been on display each summer for the last 38 years. We think this is a great example of a man with a mission living “his best life.”

In addition to the display, which takes up the entire bottom floor of his house, the exhibit also includes a full size railway station and caboose, plus a Pullman car converted to a model train store.

So here are my top ten pictures of Trainland USA, yet another fascinating part of Americana.