Jackson Family Visit to the Mall Train Display

After Christmas the Jackson family visited the Holiday Train Display. John Jackson Jr. and his wife Barbara came from Michigan. Philip Jackson and his sister Kim Alling live here in Maine, Kim brought her three children, Alex, John and Jamie, who are John and Gigi's grandchildren.  

They saw the drawbridge that John built and noticed their Dad's military badge at the center. It came from his service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Other visitors were surprised when we opened the drawbridge to enter or leave the control area. Some of the kids got to raise it to see to see the trains stop, and to feel how easy it was with the balancing counterweights on the cables. The two counterweights are bottles of BBs that hang in tubes below the bridge. Wire rope runs from the counterweights through pulleys in the towers to the moving part of the bridge. Micro-switches under the bridge will stop a train that is near the bridge when it opens.

There were a bunch of questions about the bridge. One of the interesting ones was from a boy who asked if the trains knew which way to go from the duct tape arrows on the drawbridge platform......

(Well, not really, but they do tell the operators which way to point the locomotives when changing trains.)

Denver Rio Grande and Western Passenger Train on the drawbridge

Open Wide......

Rio Grande Freight and PRR Passenger Trains on the drawbridge

New York Central A-B locomotives and ten car Coal Train crossing the  drawbridge

PRR A-A Locomotives and Passenger Train leaving the drawbridge