Neither your age nor your gender will stop you from having a great time at EnterTrainment Junction.
Trains—ninety of them in all! The building houses the world’s largest train display: 25,000 square feet (1/2 of a football field!) done in eye-popping intricacy to detail. A funhouse or fantasyland is also at EnterTrainment Junction, not just trains. “What we are focused on is a family entertainment center and museum, where everybody of all ages will find things to excite and interest them,” said Don Oeters, president and creative inspiration behind EnterTrainment Junction.
This place is seriously incredible. A Clown College, a Tilt Room, where balls roll uphill and people feel the disorientation of a world on a slant; the Curtain Cove, where slatted curtains divide chambers and you become lost in the maze and left to find the way out. Take a trip through the universe, where a spiral tunnel with lights will have you holding on to railings for fear of falling into deep space, and the claustrophobia “squeeze” that is a badge of honor to go through, and great fun too.
The café at EnterTrainment Junction has subs, pizzas, hot dogs, snacks, drinks and more. There’s also a gift shop and toy store, where the toys and gifts are in a class by themselves.
More about the trains: the layout has attracted kids and adults who love trains from all over. Kids (and adults) can also take part in six different scavenger hunts. Almost every detail of the layout is hand-made, with more than 100,000 hours in construction and journey from the 1860s to the 1950s.
You’ll see a Union army encampment of the American Civil War with historical detail, including a trestle bridge burned by rebels, and rebuilt by Union troops in nine days. All this while trains of the era chug along, supported by sound effects that take you back in time.
There’s a replica of the very first “lift” bridge in the US, built in New York City more than a century ago. You’ll see villages and towns with the stores and services of bygone generations; a logging camp, a coal-mining operation in the Appalachian mountains; the Bates Motel and the Psycho house on the hill; trolleys serving more modern cities of the 1940s and 1950s; and a historically accurate replication of Cincinnati’s Coney Island.
Add to this the train museum for those who want to know more about how the advent of trains changed America and its culture, and you get a sense of what you’ll find at EnterTrainment Junction.