| Track Down Family Fun at EnterTRAINment Junction |
By: By Barbara Littner David - November 2008
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Posted: Friday, October 31, 2008 9:54 am
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A chance to talk with Santa and walk with Dickens’ immortal characters from A Christmas Carol await at the city’s newest holiday attraction. “Christmas at the Junction,” part of the new EnterTRAINment Junction at Squire Court in West Chester opens this month and runs throughout the Christmas season.
The kids and I recently got a sneak peek of the experience. Standing at the beginning of A Christmas Carol in Scrooge’s gloomy bedroom, we walked from there to Christmas Past through a Victorian village and then to Ebenezer’s counting house with its dimly lit fire. We saw the effects of Scrooge’s selfishness in the poverty of Tiny Tim’s shabby home in Christmas Present, but we also saw how the visits of the three spirits allowed Scrooge (and us!) to escape greed’s ultimate penalty of the cemetery and instead celebrate Christmas immersed in Charles Dickens’s classic.
The uplifting seasonal fun continues with “Journey to the North Pole.” A sparkling ice cave shelters us from a forest snowstorm, but soon snow-covered hills give way to your destination — the North Pole. Mrs. Claus greets every¬one with cookies, and along with elves and reindeer, makes waiting for Santa a little easier.
Anyone waiting to ask Santa for a train for Christmas must visit “The Train Journey,” which requires an ad¬ditional admission fee. With more than two miles of track and 90 G-scale trains (1/24th the size of a real train,) EnterTRAINment features the largest indoor train display in the world with layouts of railroading’s early, middle and modern periods.
From the gaslight lined Main Street entrance, we started a scavenger hunt through the 1830s to the civil war period and through the 1890s. The kids quickly found two items on their scavenger lists as I watched trains chug past and admired the waterfall and its streams that run throughout the entire exhibit. I learned that volunteers’ attention to detail ensure historically accurate bridges, buildings, and signage, and that creating the civil war figures meant breaking and rebuilding them before adding accessories and hand painting.
Attention to detail is everywhere. Passing beneath a time travel tunnel to the middle period of the 1890s to 1950s, riverboat era music gives way to the Andrews Sisters singing about sitting under the apple tree. We watched streetcars zip past the Woolworth building and trains go by the Fox theatre and on to a remote drive-in theater.
Each bend brings new surprises and finally a time tunnel to the modern era of the 1960s to the present. While Barbra Streisand sings “People,” diesels and subways travel the city, eventually changing from day to night with overhead lights and individual lighted windows.
The American Railroading Museum surrounds the panoramic exhibits. The museum tells the story of how the railroad affected the country. For instance, our synchronized time zones developed with cross-country travel, and the railroad’s tools, technology and vocabulary have influenced all of us. The kids discovered these facts with touch screens and games while I enjoyed videos featuring train-inspired feature films like “The Great Train Robbery” and “Some Like It Hot.”
Trains also inspire passionate hobbyists who will enjoy The Great Train Expo Center. It houses the Cincinnati Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and features a library and other historical material. Visitors can see craftsmen working on the displays now, but eventually the center will host educational seminars for train enthusiasts and children.
But for now, kids will love Imagination Junction. Numerous Thomas the Tank Engine train sets invite little ones to push engines and cars through the Island of Sodor. My kids lounged at the mini-theater running Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs when they took a break from pumping the hand car or shoveling coal on a life sized train, but mostly they went full steam — climbing, crawling and sliding in a giant railroad-themed play structure.
Barbara Littner David is a local mother and freelance writer.
EnterTRAINment Junction
7379 Squire Court, West Chester
513-898-8000
entertrainmentjunction.com
Hours
Mon - Sat, 10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Sun, 12 - 6 p.m.
Admission
$12.95, adults
$9.95, ages 3 - 12
free, ages under 3
$11.50, ages 65 and older
$2.50, Kids’ Express
Free parking
Christmas at the Junction, $8
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