Edaville USA~The Visit

When I first started to tell you about going to Edaville Railroad in Carver, Ma I didn’t intend to get carried away with the history of the park or their current woes but I’m glad I took the time to tell everyone about it.

Now I want to tell you what I thought of the actual visit. First of all there was a moment of déjà vu as JR pulled out his camera only to find he had forgotten the battery. Those of you who have been following this blog may remember that when we were in St Augustine, he left the battery on the charger in the car when we boarded the trolley. At least that time we could go back to the car and retrieve the battery but this time he left it on the charger at his parent’s home in NH. He was out of luck this time.

Once we had our tickets and entered the park we walked the path to the General Store. I like this path. There are light displays in the field the path crosses but the path itself has a canopy of lights..

The general store was nearly empty probably because the season was not only winding down for this year but possibly forever.

Back outside there were little cottages with display windows . Each had a different Holiday Scene depicted. They were hard to photograph but made a pretty little street. Also along here were a couple of booths with arcade games and hawker.

As we came to a fork in the path more displays were set up here including a gazebo with lights.

 The right fork led to more children’s rides, a Ferris wheel and the boarding area for the train.

To the left was a gift shop and “Ellis Playhouse”. We decided to go there first.

Inside there were so many interior displays that we could have spent our whole visit there.

Back outside, we picked up Hot Chocolate and headed to the train. There were a number of locomotives around the grounds with open access. This gave us great photo ops.

As we waited to board we checked out some of the other rides. The carousel was temporality out of service because of the recent snow. Crew were busy digging the carousel out. We both thought the NASA ride was pretty cool and it made a great picture with it’s lights in the dark.

 The big red Teddy bear was another fun display.

Then it was time to ride the train. It’s about a 2 mile loop and only takes about 15 minutes. I got some pictures of some of the lights from the platform but once the train begins to move everyone has to get into the passenger cars. Those windows made photography impossible so sadly, I have nothing to show you from the train ride once we got going. I can tell you they were cute. There was everything from Lighted dinosaurs to a little village, an animated & lighted golfer to leaping fish and frogs.

The folks we were sitting near were friendly and many people in our car were lamenting the possible end of an era.
The train pulled back into the station and we hopped off. Since we didn’t have children that might want to ride the kiddie rides, we took a few more pictures and wrapped up our night. It was really enjoyable. The park hadn’t seemed too busy while we were there but as we were leaving long lines of cars were just pulling in. I think a lot of people wait until full dark before they come over. After all, this is a Festival of Lights so one would imagine they are best viewed after dark.

We could see that some of the displays were looking a bit worn and some paint might have brightened the park up but once the light faded and the lighted displays began to take over the landscape any general shabbiness was quickly forgotten.

I know my memories will be of the glittering Holiday lights, not faded paint on the side of a building.
Here’s hoping someone steps up to save this little historical park.

For more pictures of the Edaville USA 2010 check out my Flickr photostream.