I got a preview of the railroad exhibit and it is most interesting. It focuses on the railroads of Sonoma Valley. There were several railroads that ran through the valley, both of freight (fruit turkeys, milk, nuts) and passengers who came from San Francisco to our resorts and hotels.

Looking for the world like another hokey tourist trap, this is building is a replica of the original 'Train Station' where visitors could board real scheduled passenger/freight trains. Trains that were called "Puffer Bellies" or more simply "Choo-Choos". Disbelief, skepticism, wonder - hey look; there's a nice bike path. With pedestrians walking along it! Lots of them. And, wonder of wonders, there is a paved parking lot. For the very vehicles that killed off most passenger service. Step into the building and see what used to be. You have to reset your mind to imagine what trains were all about a century ago. Perhaps the situation is best illustrated by the opening scene in the movie "The Music Man", in which a group of traveling salesmen are riding along to the next stop and the next, and the next...... Visitors need not worry about finding out what it is all about. Enthusiastic guides will fill you with enough facts to convince you that life used to be this different. That the country was once tied together with a web of steel just like the hundred feet or so of rail supporting the handful of rail cars outside. For there actually was a railroad line that came right through here on the way toward Glen Ellen and that other town, Napa and beyond it to Oakland and by ferry to San Francisco. Once upon a time there was a special train that carried Abraham Lincoln to his grave. Another ran across the country, carrying the mementos of the founding of this United States, the documents now kept at Washington D.C. museums. The right-of-way under your feet used to go on Westward to connect to the Hot Spring Resorts along Highway 12 and onward to Jack London's Glen Ellen. Human freight came this way, from storage facilities where the insane were kept away out of sight. For a while, these unfortunates were sent back to their birthplaces; be that Mason City, Iowa or Berlin, Germany. They were deported to relieve the budget of the State of California. Today, many of those old routes are being reactivated to supplement the Freeways that put trains out of business. Single occupancy is the way of life now - people transport themselves like automatons; lined up to go somewhere. And to come back.