That done I popped up a map on my iPad and asked it how to get to the Museum of Science and Industry. The answer is that there is an express bus that runs door to door every ten minutes and that the next one was about to arrive. So I hopped on it and spent a lovely afternoon walking all around the place. It has been a very long time since I'd been to exactly that sort of museum (rather than a museum of one or the other) and this one was very impressive. They have a bunch of significant train stuff and I stood in the cabin of the 999 and also some other interesting trains. They have an enormous model train set with some fun Easter eggs and an incredible level of detail. The set is fully signalized just like a real train setup, with red yellow and green lights at the start of each section of track and automatic throttling of the engines. They have crossing gates that blink and go up and down when a train comes. They have an HO model of the entire Loop plus each adjacent block outside it including every building, good enough that you would not easily be able to tell the difference between a cell phone pic taken from the balcony and one of the real thing taken from an airplane.
Not everything at the museum is brilliant. Skip the historical main street recreation, especially if you have seen the much better ones at the Henry Ford or the House on the Rock. And there were a few other exhibits that didn't really stand up. But there was a great exhibit of science fiction and another of science fictional things about to become reality, and the level of detail on the u-boat is fantastic, and the aircraft include some you won't see anywhere else. The weather exhibit was really neat. And there were a few random things here and there that really tickled my fancy.
My bus foo on the way back was not as good as it was on the way there, so I managed to exactly miss the Carl Brandon Society awards. But there was a lovely Indian food dinner, and some good party hopping and a Japanese tea ceremony, and I presupported Helsinki. Eemeli seems a little dazed by the number of $20 bills people have given him. I suppose the next step is to take a look at the facilities and the local scene there and what kind of support he has and see what I think. This is a Next Generation bid and it might be able to address some of the issues I mentioned in yesterday's post. But it might not either if, like Orlando, it has some tragic flaw. We'll see.
