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http://thomasthetankengine.com
Friday, 5/2/03
Tom took his son Sam, and Sam's friend Dylan Rief to the Train Museum in
Fillmore's Central Park to check out Thomas the Tank Engine. Pam was
scheduled to deliver Tess Nicole on Saturday, so she stayed home to finish nesting.
The Fillmore train museum continues to expand. Thomas the Tank Engine was visiting for a couple of weekends, and the town of Fillmore hosted a festival around the event. All the activities were free except the train ride ($14 each).
The weekend before was reportedly crowded, but with rain in the forecast, Friday's turnout was comfortable. We stayed dry all day, but it was threatening when we left later in the afternoon. Tom, Sam, and Dylan arrived about a quarter to 10.
The boys opted for the train ride right away. Fillmore had a varied assortment of old museum cars coupled together with Thomas on one end. The other end was powered with two real locomotives. Top speed for the 25 minute ride was about 10 mph. We started and ended in the dining car, but toured the length of the train once underway.
We took a snack break in the eating area after the train ride. That was followed by the petting zoo, and some races to the music on the green lawn. We sat in on a couple of storytelling sessions, and went for a couple of tattoo applications also. The tattoos were followed by a half hour of playing with the electric toy trains, then the bouncers.
We invited ourselves in for a self tour of City Hall. Sam & Dylan took turns being Mayor in the Council Chambers. We scanned the gift shops, did the hay bale maze a number of times, and checked in with the fire department for a short safety course in their miniature two story house. For the quiz at the end, Sam answered with 611 as the number to dial in an emergency (those sixes and nines can be confusing for beginners). The boys were fixated by the model trains across the street for at the Visitor's Center. Back for photos with Sir Topham Hatt.
More tattoos and stories before I settled in on the lawn for music and snacks while the two youngsters burned the calories. I liked the music on the lawn the best. It was relaxing and pleasant to watch the boys having so much fun with something simple like tumbling around on the clean grass to the beat of the guitars.
Rain was threatening so we departed about 3 pm, and got poured on during the drive back to Carpinteria.
Editors Note: 5/23/03
Some of the pictures aren't so good, but we were trying to give the moms a feel of the day. We took 89 shots, and cut the batch to 22 for the initial post. We may edit down later.