This weekend started fairly slowly, Alana had a ballet trial on Saturday and Cameron was invited to a friend's party (that all five of us ended up gatecrashing).
On Sunday I slept in, while Kristine got up and made omelets. My morning started when I walked upstairs to hear Tomas explaining omelets to Cameron:
"This is made of egg.... Pure egg!"
I'm not sure what sort of omelets he'd had in the past, but with the way he said it, I expected the first bars of the James Bond theme to start up.
We managed to blitz most of the housework early, so I suggested that we should go out to Ängelholm, where I'd heard there was an Airforce Museum and a Railway Museum.
The drive out was mostly down the freeway, but I experimented with a new toy and tried some timelapse videos showing the scenery. The freeway isn't the most exciting drive and it goes mainly through farmland and fields. If you have super quick reflexes you may be able to pause the video in time to see a moose warning sign...
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| Driving to Ängelholm |
Our first stop in Ängelholm was the Järnsvägen (Railroad - Literally Iron Road) Museum.
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| Entrance to the Järnvägens Museum |
The museum attendants apologised that all of the exhibits were in Swedish, but they had a guide book in English that covered a majority of the exhibits.
The highlights of the museum were a huge model traintrack, a trainsimulator - where a screen shows a journey on three different trains (steam, electric and modern bullet train) and the seats vibrate as if you were aboard the train, and a big display of signals and telephony that showed how they did the switchboard work and communication between stations and the trains.
The kids liked the train repair truck - they could climb aboard and see where the crew sat and outlines for all the different tools that were used:
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| The kids in a train repair truck |
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| Tomas poses on the back of the repair truck |
The next exhibit showed the way the train signals worked. There was an orange and a green highlighted section and a railway crossing on each side. As the train approached the coloured section the warning lights would begin and the when the barrier was down, the train light would switch from red to green allowing the train to pass:
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| The train signal demonstrator |
The kids were impressed by the big model train on display under the floor, but were too scared to step on the glass:
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| Model Train |
The upstairs section had a big display on how the telephone system used to work, showing how the manual switchboards were run and also how the automatic switch board worked. The kids could dial from one of the phones and hear the relays in the switchboard trigger as the call was routed to another phone that would then ring:
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| Alana investigates/sabotages the phone relay |
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| Cameron makes a long distance call to Tomas |
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| Panoramic shot of a display demonstrating the phone connections between stations |
There was also a mockup of a control room, where the kids got a chance to see how the trains were originally controlled:
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| Hard at work in the Control Room - well yelling at Cameron to get out of the way in the Control Room |
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| Controlling the trains is hard work |
One of the coolest exhibits was a big model railway:
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| The railway |
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| Panoramic view of the railway set up |
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| The railway |
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| The horse cart and a couple of the other trains |
There was also a small section showing about coal mining:
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| Tomas considers mining for coal - "Its a bit like minecraft, but if it was minecraft there would be a chest on the his minecart." |
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| One of the old measuring tools used to determine whether the rail was flat |
One of the exhibits showed how the railway makes it easier to move weight due to the reduction of friction between the wheels and the rails. They have a cart of 1.4 ton which the kids could push easily.
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| Tomas practices his rugby skills |
On the way out, the kids were given the choice of a souvenir (a train keyring) or an icecream. They all rushed to the freezer but Tom impressed me. He gave me a serious look and said "I will get a keyring as it will last longer than an Icecream." He impressed me even more when he traded a hold of his keyring to Cameron for a big bite of Cam's icecream..
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| Tom's Keyring |
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| Kristine proves she can multi-task - eating an ice-cream and fixing Cam's jacket. |
When we got back to the car we had a panic. The indicators were flashing (usually a sign that someone had tried to open it when it is locked) and the GPS and its mount were not on the windscreen. The kids had also left their IPads in the car tucked under the seats (we normally take them in with us but had forgotten this time). We ran back to the car and Kristine pointed to a handprint above the door while I looked through the windows but couldn't see the GPS. When I caught sight of the IPads I was a bit confused, it would be odd to steal the GPS and not search for the IPads. The doors were still locked so we unlocked and I checked inside. We never found out what caused the indicator lights to flash, but the GPS suction pad had come off the window (usually due to the cold air outside) and had fallen under my seat. Crisis averted.
Next we drove out to the Airforce Museum:
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| Driving through Ängelholm towards the Flight Museum |
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