Pottersville

Bob loves trains. I enjoy miniatures. Bob found a museum that fit both our interests.

Bob came over the border to visit me at the cottage. It takes me an hour and 45 minutes to get from my house in Vermont to the cottage in New York...a distance of about 80 miles. Bob lives in Hubbardton, which is about halfway between. He actually likes meeting me at the cottage because he gets to take the Ticonderoga ferry across a narrow area of Lake Champlain.

He came for dinner on Wednesday and on Thursday morning we traveled along Route 8 out of Hague, heading towards Pottersville. I once thought this stretch of road had more curves than anyplace else. I now know better! But it does have one thing that's missing from the road between Cluny and Blanot, France...

Fortunately, this elephant just watches the traffic go by.

 
We passed some beautiful small lakes along the way. I checked that there was access for a kayak so I can return another day for a different type of adventure.

If someone had described this house to me, I wouldn't have believed them.

Here a picture really is worth a thousand words. I wonder if the inside is as wild as the outside?

 Then we reached Pottersville. From the outside we could tell the museum building had once upon a time been a restaurant. Now it is 5000 square feet of scenes with all kinds of trains going in all directions.

This picture illustrates the first problem I encountered. Moving trains photograph as a blur.

Solution? Don't take pictures of moving trains. There were too many to avoid, but many of them would pause briefly and then continue on.

Americans proclaim a reverence for their flag, but we seem to use the flag as decoration for places or events, no matter how trivial.

Even that piece of culture showed up in some of the museum scenes. 

There were a lot of figures, yet I never had the feeling that a was seeing the same person even for a second time.

The scenes were set up geographically, moving from the 1939-1940 World's Fair on Long Island, NY across the Hudson into New Jersey and then back into New York as they moved northward.

The Catskill Mountains are south of the Adirondack Mountains.

Scenes also depicted all of the seasons. These colors will be showing up soon in the real world.

It was also interesting to watch the lighting for each scene change from day to night and back again. During the "day" the train lights were off. As night approached, not only were the trains lit, but house lights would turn on and become brighter.

They also worked to have perspective. Buildings, trees, trains, and even people were larger in the foreground.

You could spend hours checking out the details.

There's a real house that Alfred Hitchcock had reconstructed on the Hollywood set for the movie Psycho.It became known as "Mother's house" and it now also exists in one of the train scenes. As in the movie, there's a light on in a second floor window!

The ice skaters glided hither and yon. We really don't have the big open squares with nothing but cobblestones that seem to be in every European city. 

The bulldozer rumbled back and forth. The house wall was constantly being raised. One fellow never stopped sawing a piece of wood while another hammered the same nail forever.

The man who designed these scenes had a career designing theatre sets for Broadway. Apparently 55 people had a hand in putting all of this together. The museum opened its doors for the first time last August.

The hay is being lifted into the barn. Somehow the wagon never gets empty.

Nearby was a fisherman in a rowboat on a small pond. He had caught a fish and his fishing pole would raise the fish out of the "water" and then let the fish disappear again. I took at least 5 photographs, but I couldn't get the timing right in order to "catch" that fish in the picture!

I got a chuckle out of seeing legs and arms moving to make a snow angel. Do kids make snow angels in France?

One large display was of Prince Edward Island up in Canada...really good waterfront details...

this is only a portion of the Prince Edward Island display

This would be an enjoyable place to visit for those who like antique cars. There were a slew of them in some of the other scenes.

Bob enjoyed seeing the construction and farm machinery in the displays...he managed to find a green John Deere tractor, his favorite.

The train museum was a pleasant morning's excursion.

We returned to the cottage for lunch, a nap, and then had time for a swim before Bob left for his home.

I spent the evening playing Rummykub with Mimi and getting ready to leave for Belmont, VT the next day. I had to be home on Friday in time to usher for Fiddler on the Roof at the Weston Playhouse. While collecting tickets in the balcony for that performance, I got to see Margery and Gary. They came to see the show the evening I happened to be ushering!