Carol & Warner's Trip Around The USA: Dearborn, Michigan The Henry Ford Museum

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Dearborn, Michigan, Greenfield Village

At 8:30am, we meet David, a former student of mine and the Railroad Specialist for the Henry Ford Museum. He meets us in the employee parking lot and gives us a ride to the Railroad Road Roundhouse on the museum grounds. We have tour of the railroad shop filled with steam engines is various stage repair, huge complicated machines, bit and pieces of railroad cars and steam engine parts. We hear fascinating histories of the various pieces of equipment and we hear that Henry Ford loved trains and instead of collecting model trains, he collected the real thing.

One of the engines Henry collected runs everyday carrying visitors to the museum. The engine, built in 1873, is the oldest steam engine in daily service in the

United States

After our tour, David arranged for us to visit the museum as his guest. He went back his work and we set out to tour Greenfield Village. The first thing we did was board the steam train for an introduction to the museum grounds.

Henry Ford was not only a collector of trains; he collected buildings and artifacts to fill them. We visited Mr. Ford’s birthplace, had tea in the yard of a English Cotswold Cottage, rode in a Model T Ford, watched glass blowers, a tinsmith and a potter practicing their trades; visited a house where Robert Frost had lived and written, talked with a museum interpreter in the house where Noah Webster had lived in New Haven, Connecticut.

Greenfield Village is a fascinating place to visit. In addition to the above exhibits, we also stopped by Wilbur and Orville Wright’s Bicycle shop and talked with all sorts of interested people well versed in the history of the village and its various exhibits. The day passed swiftly and at 5pm, we returned to roundhouse to meet David. After the closing of the museum his job was prepare the steam engine for the next day and then return it to the roundhouse.

He climbed into the cab of the engine beckoning to us and saying; Come on!” Carol and I climbed up into the cab and watched as David pulled levers, blew the whistle, rang the bell and set the iron monster in motion. Fantastic! David brought the smoke and steam belching behemoth to the coal car and loaded the engine with coal for the next day.

We then rode to the water tower and filled the water tank. That done, David drove the engine onto the turntable in front of the roundhouse. My job was to push the turntable around, complete with large engine, until it lined up with the track leading into the roundhouse. David drove the engine into the roundhouse and our excellent adventure ended in a cloud of steam. Thank you, David.

What a glorious day we had, and I had realized a childhood dream of actually being in the cab of a steam engine.

Tomorrow – Niagara Falls.