We made our way to the very cool joshi train museum a few days ago. Housed in a 25' x 25' room on the top floor of an old instrumentation factory, this museum is the most unassuming one I have ever been too. That said, its exhibit is one of the most compelling. The museum opens at 9:30 am so against the advise of hardened Indians Vehd and I made our way there right around 9:45 am. The museum was open. After paying a hefty sum (by Indian standards as opposed to the usual $0.50) of $3 as entry fee for the two of us, we waited to be led up a set of stairs to the actual museum. As we waited we took in the museum shop that sells true to scale train sets made out of metal and plastic running on electrically charged tracks. Very cool! We also reveled in the train compartment facade of the restaurant next to the shop.
Finally, a green signal at the bottom of the stairs leading to the museum room announced our welcome. We made our way up, slowly and excitedly with Vehd stopping at every step to comment on all that he saw. His incessant commentary came to a complete halt as he entered the museum room. Before us, on a platform about 4 feet high was a 15' x 15' display of a miniature city, complete with train tracks, mountain sides, lakes, swimming pools that contained people swimming in it, ducks, a circus tent, a hot air balloon, train stations, cable cars, upside down trains, cars, people, factories spewing smoke (yes!), a park, dogs and everything else you cannot even begin to imagine.
We were asked to choose a spot on the two benches that went around the display before the "show" started. Then it was showtime! Amidst changing lights and sprays of water, a genie transformed us into miniature people who could walk through the city before us and then told a story of the life in the city. The plot included people waking up in the morning and getting to work using cars and trains (of course), using factories to generate coal for old-time trains, viewing upside-down trains next to a circus tent that lifted to reveal a complete circus production. This was followed by an afternoon of people swimming in the pool while others took cable cars (another type of train) to the top of a mountain or others that boated in the local lake. In the middle of all this a building was on fire and a fire engine (also a type of train engine) made its way there. On and on the story went...
As I took 50 plus pictures, Vehd stood motionless and speechless, soaking it all in. In the end he said, "again, please. I want to see circus tent go up and more...". Unfortunately, our steep $3 charge covered only one show and I figured we should walk away while at the height of the experience.
Needless to say, we will return again this week.
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