Apparently the city of Fullerton does the Fullerton Railroad Days most years, and I wanted to check it out (especially since it’s only a few miles away). There were several different layouts in different scales, but the one I liked the most was a modular HO layout as you first walk into the area which featured a trestle and actual water flowing down the mountain.
Trestles look awesome and for a fleeting moment I thought my layout needed one, but I have no idea where I would put it. They also look pretty difficult to build!
The main attraction that I wanted to visit at Railroad Days was the BNSF locomotive #7118. They were allowing you to go into the cab which seemed exciting to me. We waited in a somewhat long line (which grew twice as long a few minutes after we got in line) and our trek to the cab began.
We climbed some wooden stairs up to the back of the locomotive then walked along the side to the front, entering the cab through a narrow door. The inside wasn’t as impressive as I was expecting. Since I’ve never seen the inside of a locomotive before, I pictured all kinds of flips and switches, dials and buttons, levers and who knows what else. Maybe I was expecting some kind of scifi rocket ship interior. While there were some switches and levers, it was mostly a couple of monitors and large buttons in front of the engineer. And it was a much smaller view out the windows than I was expecting too!
After seeing the BNSF loco, we toured a couple of cabooses and the Amtrak exhibit train. There was also a steam engine from Disneyland – Engine #4 the Ernest S. Marsh.
Another interesting layout that I saw was a big lego layout by the Southern California LEGO Train Club. There were several trains running and some rather large buildings. Pretty impressive!
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