If you are an art aficionado or devotee, there are museums in every state and in every country you can go to. Almost every one of them will be good and some will be excellent. Others are beyond excellent, you almost have to pinch yourself to believe what you are seeing. The Louvre in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art in New York are a few of those kinds of places.
I liken this experience to art because when you see the trains in the California State Railroad Museum, you'll get it like I did. These things are art. It's tempting to think toy trains are art. They are. But they are art imitating life which is (in fact) art. The paint, the color, the metals and smells are just heavenly. I've been to the Vatican, I've been in the Sistine Chapel more than once and this is pretty close to that experience.
The California State Railway Museum is one of those museums where you need to pinch yourself to make sure that either:
A. You aren't sleeping or dreaming.
B. That you haven't left the planet and are now at the Pearly Gates of Railroad Heaven.
C. You want to make sure blood and oxygen flow to all parts of your body is still normal.
I had to walk through this museum twice to absorb it. There is a two hour parking limit down the Streets of Old Sacramento. Just don't do it. You aren't leaving that place in two hours. And even if you do, there are more trains and a Steamboat behind the museum. Just don't. Park in the lot across the street and figure you'll be there at least 4 hours. And bring a camera with a ton of space on your memory card. I took 600 shots without blinking an eye. I brought a really nice Oympus 13.5 megapixel camera and now I kind of wish I brought the Nikon. The town of Old Sacramento wonderful as well. Not quite a religious experience, it still is a place where you can spend (easily) a day walking around, looking at the shops and making friends with some wonderful people. Loved it and I want to go back and ride the riverboat and the trains.
By the way, the museum only offers train rides on the weekend. If I didn't have locked and loaded airline tickets....
So I'll post the pics outside of this little blurb I've written. Blogger (the Google Software) has a tendency to jumble up the text when I insert the pictures, so I'll try to keep my prose short and sweet.
Marc
How nice is this car? It's even better on the inside! Somehow I don't feel like we've taken too many steps forward in transportation! Sure, I can get to the coast in 6 hours (not including the TSA, time to the airports, parking and so on). This just looks so much more civilized.
They have these wonderful models all over the place. Check this one out. By the way, they also have quite a few folks walking around the museum in period railroad outfits that are extremely well tuned with knowledge and info on the exhibits.
A cool little mock up of a station and a wonderful shot of the inside of the stations. They have well articulated mannequins throughout the museum in almost every exhibit. They are well done in period dress appropriate for the subject matter. 
Gorgeous. The colors in person are even better.
Marc
So as far as I'm concerned, I got at least half of my nine bucks worth right in the foyer. By the way, the gift shop isn't bad. That have a decent selection of railroad books. A little pricey but they need to support one of the best museums in the world so I tend to want to cut them some slack. More soon.
Some of you requested I post some pics of Mr Cohen doing his thing. I dug back in the archive and found a few. I know I have more, they are just part of about 10,000 pictures I have stored so far on my server..
The maroon 1912 was specially weathered by Jim. He had varying techniques and degrees of aging and weathering. The TCA had asked him to limit the weathering process because at one point, his weathered trains (that he had built and weathered) were impossible to tell from the original. Yep, they were that good. And even with his initials on the bottom, it still shook some folks up enough to ask him not to age the trains or to mark them heavily so as not to be passed off as the real thing.
If you spent any time around Jim, his garage and basement always smelled like train paint and lacquer. It didn't bother me too much and it was very distinctive. I think he stopped noticing it after years of exposure. The paint booth in his garage was really cool and worked beautifully. This guy was one of those rare American artists that just honed his craft to perfection. As kind of an interesting footnote, I went with Jim to the shop in New Haven (it's just off the Yale Campus) where he got the rubber stamping for the New York, New Haven and Hartford stamps for these. He didn't use decals like many other manufacturers do. It really does make a difference in the quality of the train. The place was kind of interesting too, very old building in a very busy part of town. The guy was constantly picking up new stamps, or some kind of new die to make a window or truck. I wish there was a way to give him 20 more years...
When I see the brass 1912, I always think of Inca Treasure. Imagine what someone will think 1000 years from now when they find this thing. I'm pretty sure it will capture someone's imagination even then. 
