Trains for Weyland

Weyland loves trains. He has loved them with a passion ever since we visited Tweetsie Railroad a year ago. Show him paper, he asks you to draw a train. Favorite board book? Freight Train by Donald Crews. Favorite toy? Wooden Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks. Favorite Android app? Rail Maze. Favorite thing to do in London? Ride the train (subways count).

Tuesday I took Weyland to a museum just for him: the London Transportation Museum. It doesn’t usually show up on lists of child-friendly things to do about London, but it should. I thought of it because I used to take toddler-Garrett to the Wilmington Railroad Museum, a low-budget place that is really just an excuse to house model trains in a building with a few historic items, and a couple retired railroad cars outside. He’d push buttons, start trains, watch the figurines go round and round, and play in the toddler corner.

Though I went with little knowledge of the exhibits available, the London Transport Museum did not disappoint.

We started the day with Weyland’s most-requested activity: riding the tube. We live by the first above-ground stop on the Jubilee line. After dropping off the older boys, we hopped on the tube headed north (away from our destination, but through an above-ground section that gives plenty of entertaining views). I took Weyland off my back and let him ride in his own seat, and he exclaimed with delight over the sights. “Look! Railroad! Look! Train! Look! Tunnel!” After a while we got off at a small station that makes no connections with other lines. We walked across the platform, waited a minute, and got on the next train south. Weyland always counts how many different trains we ride, and since we had to transfer from the Jubilee line to the Piccadilly, we enjoyed THREE trains that morning.

Inside the museum, we started with the 19th Century transportation exhibit. Although climbing into the antique conveyances initially appealed to him, the talking (and sometimes slightly animated) mannequins unnerved him, and we left. The exhibit about the history of the London Underground was perfect. Here were familiar sights (escalator models, tunnels, historic versions of tube cars) and the best sort of museum feature: buttons and levers. Below he is pushing buttons that send out models of underground trains.

The museum is in a lovely old warehouse that used to be the flower market. Three levels have been carved out around the edges, but the center portion remains open. When we walked into the middle of the ground floor Weyland spotted the model subway train going back and forth on the edge of the first floor, and this required that we dart back and forth the length of the room to watch it for a while. Eventually I lured him up to the first floor and showed him where he could see it much closer. He really was happy to sit on the floor, nose pressed to plexiglass, and wait several minutes for the train to complete its trek to the other end of the line and return to the rail just feet from him. The actual full-sized train behind him, while worthy of notice, simply could not hold his attention like this miniature animated one.

There was, as I’d expected, a train table. But this one, instead of being mass produced, is a miniature version of London! There is the London Eye (the huge ferris wheel that my children could see so clearly from our City of London apartment), the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, the River Thames, the Transportation Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and some skyscrapers that I have to admit I recognize but cannot name. There is even a recessed portion that represents the Underground.

An aside, because it is too funny not to share: while living in the City, Weyland learned to recognize St. Paul’s Cathedral from all its angles. Besides its being one of the more distinctive parts of London’s skyline, seeing it up close meant that we were nearly home! Recently I noticed a depiction of St. Paul’s on a small cartoon and showed it to Weyland, saying “do you see St. Paul’s?” He told me, “No. One St. Paul.” Oh well, I laughed, and I’m positive he understands the plural S.

The museum also has a considerable collection of antique trams and buses that Weyland completely ignored, choosing instead to fixate on this animated model tram. He stood by it, followed it back and forth, exclaimed every time it went into its “tunnel”, sat on the floor by it, made ME sit on the floor by it. I have read every single exhibit within sight of this annoying little tram, I’m sure.

When Weyland started to get tired, the only way I could pry him away from the museum is the promise of a tube ride. We will be going back!

Another train story to tell: in Durham, we have ridden the small train at the Museum of Life and Science a handful of times. At first Weyland liked it, but one morning this summer we rode when the train was full of elementary age children. When they went through the galvanized steel tunnel, they followed the driver’s suggestion and screamed. Loudly. Shrilly. Terribly. I had clapped hands over Weyland’s ears, and my unprotected ears were literally ringing for minutes after exiting. Weyland hated it, cried, and was scared to ride the train from then on. A couple weeks ago, though, he began narrating while playing his favorite Rail Maze game on my Android. Every time the train went through the tunnel, he said, “people say aaaahh!” When we ride the tube, every time we go from light to darkness, or even under an overpass, he will — quietly, smiling, so that only we notice — say, “aaaahhh.”