ANAHEIM : Railroad Exhibit Attracts Young, Old

Ted Brown was walking through Anaheim Plaza recently when the model trains in the Anaheim Museum’s display window caught his eye.

The 57-year-old Anaheim parts manager stopped, then walked to the case and peered in. Soon he was inside the museum, smiling at the tiny trains as they sped over their miniature tracks while he pondered the appeal of model railroading.

“I really don’t know, but I guess it’s just that they go around and around and around,” he said. “I remember years ago when I got my son his first train. I was the one who was always down on the floor playing with it.”

For the past two years, the railroad exhibit has been the most popular exhibit at the museum branch. The four working sets, along with the displays on railroading history, have increased attendance by as much as 1,000%, said George Cronin, curator of the museum’s plaza branch.

In fact, attendance is so good that when the train exhibit was supposed to be dismantled in September after a three-month run, Cronin extended the display through December.

“The last couple of weekends, we have had 400 people a day come in, and we have been averaging more than 200 a day,” Cronin, 71, and a rail buff himself, said. “In the past, we have had art displays and kite displays and flag displays, and we were lucky to get 30 or 40 people a day to come in.”

Open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 2 to 8 p.m. Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. weekends, the free exhibit attracts both plaza shoppers and railroad fans, Cronin said.

“We’ve had people from all over the U.S., Canada and other foreign countries come in, and some have come to the plaza just to look at us,” Cronin said. “I have one little lady who must be 80 years old who comes in every week just to look at the trains. You see, for people our age, we rode the trains when we were kids and they were special, and you’ll find a lot of older people feel that way.”

But trains also attract the young, such as 10-year-old Fausto Esquerra. He pulled his mother into the museum as they made their shopping rounds and planted himself in front of the museum’s biggest exhibit--a circus train that circles a model big-top show, complete with clowns, acrobats and hundreds of spectators.