Big Country Journal: Brownwood railroad museum keeps chugging along
BROWNWOOD — Mary Irving sees the same wonder when visitors, young and old, examine the American Flyer for the first time. The model train exhibit is the latest addition to the Martin and Frances Lehnis Railroad Museum.
"It's the same experience but seen from both ends of life. Little kids, when they come in, they really love this. They just push buttons and go back and (forth)," she said. "They really enjoy it as something they've never seen before. Think about it, there's no place to see trains running anymore."
For those who grew up with the trains, the experience releases a flood of memories.
"The older people, they love it. They talk about the train they had when they were a kid, how much they enjoyed it," she said. "They sit here and are just mesmerized because it brings back their childhood."
Irving is the curator of the museum that opened in 2007. Martin and Frances Lehnis collected railroad memorabilia for 50 years, with Martin retiring from what now is Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. In 2004, Irving was hired to catalog the couple's collection, which had been donated to create a museum after the their deaths. She has stayed on in her current position.
In addition to lanterns, whistles, clocks and a host of other items, Lehnis had an extensive model railroad collection. Frank Hilton, a volunteer, cleaned and assembled the track and created a mock landscape for the train to travel through.
"The Lionel track is made to look more like a real landscape with mountains, tunnels and animals. One of them is a tyrannosaurus rex with a cow in its mouth," said Irving. "There's a reason for that, I want the kids to start looking at everything. Then they'll see the deer in the front and the hobos in the railyard."
She said the first child to tell her what the T-rex is holding in it's mouth gets to ring the big train bell nearby.
"It gets them looking so they see more. Everything is a trick for education – but don't tell them," she said, laughing.
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