Railroad Display

Saturday evening December 17, our friends from Malakwa BC invited us to  their house in Mesa for dinner and to go and see a railroad display this family has in their backyard . The family is wealthy, own two Mexican restaurants and the father has a passion for big model trains. He has converted his huge back yard into a permanent railway exhibition. They open their yard to the public for 2 weekends only in December and you can go in and view his magnificent display of running trains. It is free but they do encourage you to donate money to the Arizona Children's hospital. We spent at least 2 hours there and of course you can imagine Doug had a great time!

 This was outside the peoples' place as we waited to be let in. There was a cholla cactus with a bird's nest in it

 Grace and I going for a walk in the neighbourhood while we waited for the yard to open

 You enter through one of his large garages where he stores all his spare train cars and parts. It in itself was something to see. You can just imagine what this must have cost him over the years!

 There were shelves and shelves of spare train cars

 He had every kind of car you can imagine: Amtrack, coal train, steam trains, coal cars and on and on

 We are now out in the yard and when you first go out, you don't know where to look first it is so impressive

 It was so realistic that Doug just couldn't believe it. He had 5 Mexican fellows helping him to keep it all running.

 We had to stop here as Doug reminisced about a few particular train derailments he helped pickup

 A coal train going by - of course Doug has a particular bent for them!

 The train derailed a few cars right by us. The little kids just can't keep their hands away so the fellows were kept busy re-railing cars all evening

 They had a roaring fire going in their outdoor fireplace and even though it wasn't that cold, Grace and I warmed up for a bit

 Doug had to get a picture of a Canadian Pacific coal car on this train

 There were arched bridges, trellises, tunnels, you name it!

 He even had a large pond with fish in it and bridges for the trains to go over the pond. Doug took some great video clips but I can't seem to get them to run in my blog so wasn't able to insert them

There was even a functioning round house

Lots of tunnels, the kids loved it when the train disappeared into a tunnel and they tried to figure where it was going to come out again

This was the front window of the train owner's house. It was a gorgeous Santa Fe style home

After we left the train display, Grace and Malcolm wanted to take us to Main street in Mesa where the Mormon Temple is as they decorate their whole property in lights and you can walk all around it. We were game so the following lights were taken on the grounds of the Mesa Mormon Temple 

This was from a distance, looking at the decorated Palm trees

 

Again from a distance, you could see the camels and three wise men walking across the lawn towards the temple

 

A bit closer look

 

There were millions of lights. Every thing that could be decorated, was!

 

The lights around a central pond

 

We have gone full circle through the grounds and are back where we started. It was a marvelous sight and well worth going. It was free and they weren't even asking for donations. they had a stage with a choir singing so it was very festive. A wonderful, fun, evening spent with Grace & Malcolm