‘Holiday Festival of Trains’ rolls into Nixon Presidential Library

All aboard, children of all ages: This week, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will open its holiday-themed world of miniature toy trains, wending through old snow-covered villages, past an 1890 Bavarian castle, over mountain passes and near thousands of trees.

Though a preview evening tonight for the “Holiday Festival of Trains” exhibition is only for Nixon Foundation members and their guests, the exhibit opens to the general public on Nov. 17, said Olivia Anastasiadis, the venue’s supervisory museum curator.

The exhibition, which runs through Jan. 10, will hold a number of attractions, like the Mountain of Trains featuring a 40-foot-long platform and more than 16 trains moving along 1,500 feet of track. Also on display will be vintage monorail model trains as well as pieces of monorail trains first used in 1959 at Disneyland. A Lego train scene boasting a 20-foot-long suspension bridge was constructed by members of the Southern California Lego Train Club, and Lego’s classic Emerald Night train will be riding these rails.

The display pictured directly below is of the train Chloe, which was owned by avid train collector and former Walt Disney Studios animator Ward Kimball. The engine has resided at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris since Kimball’s passing in 2002, and here volunteers from the Perris museum are shown polishing it.

The exhibit is a collaborative project by the Western Division of the Train Collectors Assn., the Nixon Library and the Nixon Foundation. According to Robert Lemberger of the train collectors group, the exhibit has been “a labor of love” for association members who have volunteered long days assembling it.

Entry to the exhibition is included with museum admission, which costs $9.95 per adult, $3.75 for youths ages 7 to 11, and $6.95 for seniors and students.

Contact: Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, (714) 983-9120

– Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Photos: Displays from the soon-to-open miniature-train exhibit. Credit: Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 16, 2009 at 9:14 am by Susan Derby and is filed under California, Family & Kids, Orange County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.