Night Lights

by family on Dec.05, 2009, under Family & Kids

It must be awesome to be electricity this time of year. I mean, name one other property of physics that is so beloved during the Holidays. Everywhere you look there is something comprised of lots of little lights making the nights a little brighter. I am guessing electricity enjoys the extra attention and appreciation.

We took in a couple electrically-charged activities in St. Paul recently and both were cool. The first was the annual “Night Trains” exhibit at the Twin Cities Railroad Museum in Bandana Square. It had been years since I had been in there – and I had never seen the nighttime thing, but based on a blurb on their website the whole family decided to check it out.

Every Saturday night during the Winter the museum (which normally closes at 5) re-opens from 6-9, only with all the lights off. The effect is amazing. The layout of the track incorporates bits of famous landmarks from both Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as some “small town” scenes that are more typical of model railroad setups. There are several different trains running, including a Christmas-themed one all decorated in lights. The lighting was amazing throughout, and the kids were mesmerized by the little details in each scene. I took a few cameraphone pics to show some of it, but these don’t really do justice to how impressive the whole setup is.

The other thing we did was check out the IBEW’s Holiday Lights display at Phalen Park which we wrote about a couple weeks ago. Although its on the other side of town, it turned out to be a fun thing to do right after seeing the trains. When it’s cold out, its pretty awesome to have something you can do while staying in the car, so this fit the bill. The drive through the park took about 15 mins, and took us past (and sometimes through) about 50 different light displays – most of which were animated in some way.