The Sonoma TrainTown Railroad (commonly called "Sonoma Train Town") is a

tourist railroad A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...

and 10 acre amusement park in

Sonoma, California Sonoma is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sonoma is one of the principal cities of California's Wine Country and the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA. Sonoma's p ...

. Its logo is based on the logo for the

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Mid ...

. Its main feature is a gauge

miniature railway A ridable miniature railway (US: riding railroad or grand scale railroad) is a large scale, usually ground-level railway that hauls passengers using locomotives that are often models of full-sized railway locomotives (powered by diesel or petro ...

, which closely corresponds to a 1:4 scale model of a standard gauge railroad.

History

TrainTown was founded by Stanley L. Frank of Oakland, California. In 1958 he "began bringing his dream railroad to life, building everything himself, from the houses and landscaping to the line's two steam locomotives and one electric engine." The railroad opened to the public in 1968. Frank died in 1977, and his son Robert Frank has continued to run the day-to-day operations of TrainTown alongside his wife Barbara and his daughter Monica. TrainTown also features a beautiful carousel, a mine train roller coaster, and an airplane ride. The petting zoo includes many animals, some of whom are rescues, such as goats, chickens, ducks, llamas, sheep, and bunnies.

Descriptions

Called "an endearing and surprising modern tribute to trains", TrainTown is "an obsessively accurate model railroad". It has been described as "the most well-developed miniature railroad" in the Americas. It operates in "a wooded 10-acre park on a 20-minute ride past waterfalls and beautifully detailed houses, over a trestle and through several tunnels, all precisely one-quarter the size of the real thing." It carries up to 90 passengers on each ride, and includes four miles of track. TrainTown features an operating replica of a

New York Central Hudson A New York Central Hudson was a popular 4-6-4 " Hudson" type steam locomotive built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) and the Lima Locomotive Works in three series from 1927 to 1938 for the New York Central Railroad. Named after the ...

locomotive, but numbered 5212, which no New York Central steam locomotive was ever numbered. This is considered by some to be the "most beautiful steam locomotive of the 1930s". A travel writer said that "the whole layout is so cleverly crafted that it's a marvel of dedication to the art of the train buff". In 2009, steam locomotive 4-6-4 Hudson, number 6088, arrived at Sonoma TrainTown. It was built in the 1980s and originally ran on the gauge Goleta Valley Railroad.

Other attractions

The park features a petting zoo and six vintage amusement rides: * Iron Horse Carousel * Sonoma TrainTown Airlines * Locomotion Scrambler * High Iron Ferris Wheel - a 46-foot Ferris wheel * Mine Train roller coaster - A new roller coaster that went into service in July, 2015. * Air Scooter

References

External links

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Sonoma TrainTown Railroad
15 in gauge railways in the United States 1958 establishments in California Amusement parks in California Amusement parks opened in 1958 Buildings and structures in Sonoma, California Model railroads Railroads of amusement parks in the United States Tourist attractions in Sonoma County, California