Traveling Down to Travel Town

One of the great things about living in Southern California is that it's hard to run out of first times. You know, the first time at the Hollywood Bowl, or your first time at the La Brea Tar Pits, etc. Despite living in Southern California for over 16 years, we managed to find another Southern California first: Our first time at Travel Town.


Welcome to Travel Town. (09/19/2008)

Described as a "railroad petting zoo," Travel Town is an indoor and outdoor museum dedicated to the history of transportation from the 1880s to the 1930s. The museum's roots date back to the 1940s when the steam locomotive era was drawing to a close. Railroad companies were looking to scrap their old engines. That's when a few City of Los Angeles employees began contacting the companies to see if they would be willing to donate the old engines to a transport museum.


Some of the trains at the Travel Town museum. (09/19/2008)

One thing led to another, and Travel Town officially opened to the public in 1952. In addition to the large train engines in the outdoor section of the park, Travel Town also has an indoor section featuring a variety of old cars and trucks. In addition, the museum still operates a miniature train the circles the museum grounds.


Chia and Solar on the Travel Town train. (09/19/2008)

What's funny is that we didn't even intend to go to Travel Town that day. It just turned out that we had several hours to kill after our Warner Brothers Studio Tour and our planned excursion to the Griffith Observatory. So how do you kill a couple of hours? We decided to check out Travel Town.


An unusual instruction on this train. (09/19/2008)

Now that I've been to Travel Town, I can't honestly say it's a thrill-a-minute kind of place. In fact, the grounds were practically dead that day (albeit, it was a weekday; maybe weekends are different). In fact, it almost seemed abandoned. But if you're a railroad enthusiast, I could imagine it would be awesome. I don't know if we'll go back anytime soon, but I am glad we checked it out at least once.


Chia and Tim aboard one of the Travel Town trains. (09/19/2008)

Travel Town is located within Griffith Park in Los Angeles. The museum is Open daily, except Christmas. Free admission.