Planes, Trains, and Automobiles at the Museum of Transportation

OK, so I didn't get a picture of the plane, but they do have one (and a boat.) You can see it on the slide show on the home page of the Museum of Transportation home page.



This is the whole reason we stopped. I heard years ago that the Transportation Museum had salvaged and reassembled an entire unit of the Coral Court Motel, and I am a big fan of Route 66 landmarks.



As you can see, whoever told me that an "entire unit" had been reassembled was exaggerating a bit. However according to the Coral Court website, the Museum is trying to raise money to rebuild the entire unit outside. I'm curious to know if that is still the plan.





I hadn't been to the Museum of Transportation since I was a kid. The automobile building is new to me. There are a couple dozen cars and trucks, and in addition to the Coral Courts unit, there's also a pretty nifty Drive-In display.



I wish I could blame this on lack of notebook, but I just didn't read the signs. My educated guess is that this stuff came from the Route 66 Drive In that used to be on Watson Road (aka Route 66) in Crestwood, MO.



The real claim to fame in the automobile building is the 1960 DiDia, also known as the Bobby Darin Dream Car. This car was built by a clothing designer, Andy DiDia, for Bobby Darin, and took 7 years and $153,000 to build. It is freakishly beautiful, kind of like the Graceland Jungle Room of cars.





The second floor mezzanine contains a collection of speedometers and old license tags, infinitely more interesting and artistic than it sounds, along with several hands-on exhibits about how different parts of a car work.





Onward to the train yard! I know very little about trains, so there isn't going to be a whole lot of commentary here. The train yards are what feels like miles upon miles of locomotives, cabooses, freight cars, passenger cars, and trolleys in various states of restoration. Everything you can think of that rides on tracks, they probably have one in here somewhere.





There is very little you can climb aboard in the train yard, but the cabooses are one of those things.









Here's a chemical car you can walk through the middle of.





My favorite section of the train yard is the old passenger cars, which make train travel seem delightful and romantic. Taking Amtrak across country these days sounds like torture, but if I could travel on a car like this with my Samsonite train case loaded with martini fixins like Nick and Nora I would do it in a second.









Here we have the Illinois Dynamometer Test Car. It was hard to get inside pictures through the grimy windows, but it's pretty cool. It's full of all kinds of gadgets for measuring locomotive performance.



The train yard is so big they have a trolley that will take you from one end to the other.



Between the two of us, Keith and I probably took 300 pictures, so I'm leaving out a TON of stuff. This is just a preview. You should see the rest for yourself! The Museum of Transportation is located at 3015 Barrett Station Road in St Louis, MO. Admission is $6 for adults, $4 for children and seniors, with additional cost to ride the trolley and the miniature train.

The Greatest Show Under the Earth

Meramec Caverns is far and away my favorite tourist attraction in the Midwest. Missouri is The Cave State, and Meramec Caverns is one of the most spectacular show caves (so I've heard. I've only been to two so far.) I love it so much that I make my friends go there for my birthday at least every other year, and this year was a birthday year.

Food Around Town: The Other Ted Drewes

The people in my neighborhood are going to kill me for this, but did you know there is ANOTHER Ted Drewes? A lot of people don't. It's on Grand at Meramec and is actually closer to downtown if you are one of those people that likes to stop at Ted Drewes after Local Sporting Event.



Tonight I drove by the main stand on Chippewa and saw that there were 100+ people out front, so I swung by the other stand, where there were about 20 people (this picture is from a couple weeks ago.) This stand operates from Mother's Day to Labor Day.

For more Food Around Town, check out the latest round of the St Louis Hot Dog Tour over at Pandora's Lunchbox!

Faust Park Carousel and Historic Village

A couple weeks ago we went to Faust Park because I have never been to see the carousel, plus there was a craft fair going on that weekend. They also have a historic village, and you know how I love a historic village. Everyone please welcome my special guest photographer Keith, who just got a fancy new digital SLR that beats the pants off my weenie little Nikon Coolpix.



The carousel is from the Forest Park Highlands amusement park and was built in the 1920s. It was the only thing left standing after the Highlands burned down in 1963.



In 1987 the St Louis County Parks built a climate-controlled building for the carousel, which also has a party room. Open carousel for your wedding! How cool is that?



It's also one of the fastest carousels in the world, and it only costs $1 to ride!



A beautifully detailed Stinson Organ accompanies the carousel.




The carousel house also has a big cabinet of antique toys that someone donated (I really need to take a notebook for these kinds of details on these adventures.)





Onward to the historic village! It's not quite as big and village-y as the one at Boonesfield, and I saw some amusing anachronisms (a paper towel covering a jar, Levis jeans on the blacksmith) but the people that work there know their stuff and they have a lot of impressive pieces. Wide shots are mine, detail shots are Keith's.



This is one of my favorite houses, not only because it had some really amazing pieces, but because I have been in the flooring business for a long time and I am a big nerd about historic floor coverings.





As you can see in the pictures above, these carpets are woven in the same pattern. One is the negative of the other, and they would be flipped over depending on the season. The big rug on the floor in the parlor was woven in strips the width of the stair runner and then sewn together by hand.



You may remember from the Eugene Field House post that they were getting ready to close for a couple months to install an oilcloth floor in the front entry. This is a lovely example of such a floor covering, which was the precursor to linoleum.


Close up of a medicine chest.



This is my favorite piece of the day. It's called a Wardian Case. It's a terrarium, and its purpose was to teach young Victorian ladies to be nurturing. Isn't that special?



One thing that really impressed me about this historic village was that each house had a good sized kitchen garden. That's a realistic touch I don't see much.


I lied about the wide/close thing. Keith's picture of this house was better than mine.



This is a dog powered treadmill. Really. You could have your dog do the butter churning and suchlike. Right now my parents' dog is staying with me and is tearing in circles around the yard. She could really use a job like this.



Here we have a beehive oven, which was used by families who could not afford to have a whole separate summer kitchen.



Next we have the blacksmith's shop, where as you can see, everything is Hot, Sharp, and Dirty.



He was making chains, one link at a time. In his Levis. History lesson: Levi Strauss invented the denim overalls in the 1870s, but the modern "jeans" were not invented until the 1920s.



This is a laundry building. Mostly we just had to get a picture of the boggling amount of signage. This one is for my museum friend Jen.



And finally, the vendor with the motorized ice cream churn. Now how great would that be if I could put Xena on a treadmill attached to an ice cream churn?

Faust Park is located at 15186 Olive Street Road, one mile north of Highway 64 in Chesterfield, MO. The carousel is open Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, and closes for 3 weeks in January. The Historic Village is open the last two weekends in May, June, and July with historic reenactors, and you can view the outside of the buildings any day of the week, year-round. Faust Park also has a butterfly house that is part of the Missouri Botanical Gardens.