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.
From the outside, it is hard to picture what the ground level of this house holds. 
The U shaped layout has perhaps two dozen scenes, starting in the east (New York) and ending in the west (Monument Valley). Perhaps a third of the layout is visible here. 
A scavenger hunt forces you to look at details of each scene. Here is New York. One of the things we were looking for was a policeman with captured criminal. 
The DC scene, complete with White House and many major landmarks. Most scenes had multiple buttons to push to move cranes, set off “fireworks,” make ice skaters turn, etc. 
Onward to the Mississippi, with muddy river and the aforementioned ice skaters. 
And America’s Heartland. Folk music played in the background, and there were always a half dozen Lionel-sized trains moving from scene to scene, disappearing in tunnels and reappearing in a new section. 
Monument Valley scenery serves as the backdrop for a circus scene. 
And they even managed a wild west section. 
The train depot was faithfully presented. 
And the back room of the train depot included a fascinating lecture on the trade for early engineers. Did you know the purpose of a caboose was to provide a vantage point for watching overheating elements on the train?