All Aboard!

On Saturday, we met up with our friends at the IL Railway Museum http://www.irm.org/ in Union, IL. Wow, we got lucky since we picked this date out way back in June; we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. Sunny and mid 70's, perfect!

Henry and Liam were both quite excited when they saw the trains. Little did they know we were going to ride on some of the trains and walk through some historic trains too. It's a very neat musem or as Henry calls it a "ba-seum".

This was the first train we rode on!

Jalene, Henry (almost 3), Christy and Liam (2)

First we sat here, then we went back and found more seats that had better windows views.

Ahh, this is better!

Ready to ride...

Mommy too!

A train museum would not be complete without a train set to play with.

We had fun trying to drag Henry and Liam away from this display. Too bad they already had their raisins.   A box of raisins made Henry come running from a park the other day when we wanted to leave.

Right past this display was the little park and picnic area.
We promised the boys we would be back later to eat our lunch.

Next we walked through some very old trains. Quite a few of them had little rooms that were literally just an arm chair and then a cushion folded down over the toilet. Eek, I guess it was good you had your own toilet but the quarters were definitely tight. There were some sleeping cars too with some pretty good size sleeping compartments and others were quite small.

This compartment was a decent size. This bench had room for 3 and a seat in front of it. A tiny fold out table and a bathroom with a door. At lease you could move around in this room.

A dining car!

Lunch is served. Check out the prices on this thing, super cheap!

Next up, we climbed aboard a street car.

When the train was in motion Henry made Joe and I both hold on.

After this ride we did take a break to eat lunch. Henry and Liam eagerly ran over to play on the little playground. After lunch and potty breaks we were ready to keep exploring the museum.

Next up, Barn 9 which had a few steam engines (I think there is one day they do run the steam engines, that would be a neat day to visit too) stored inside of it and....

a "Little Joe" Electric Locomotive.

After we left Barn 9 big excitement was coming...

the Zephyr train was going to run for some rides!

Scott was excited about this one and so were many others. We were lucky to ge on the first ride. Only it took a long time to actually take off. Then it paused for quite awhile during our ride too. It ended up being an hour ride with all the pauses along the way.

Henry before we left the station aboard the Zephyr. Liam and Henry passed out before the ride began and both slept for most of the ride. Good thing this was our last train ride. Rides took us out into the countryside and back again in reverse. Two of the stops were so other trains that were running could pass by.

Thanks again Christy and Scott for getting us in on your membership pass, that was a nice surprise! It was a great day!