Hartmann Model Railroad Museum

Visiting the Hartmann Model Railroad Museum with kids is a mixed bag. On one hand there are all kinds of exciting things to look at but on the other there is a lot of expensive things around and the staff is rather up tight about kids. Its kind of a shame because the hobby of model railroading needs to constantly feed itself with new hobbists and where are they going to come from if not from todays kids?

"On a trip to North America in 1991, Swiss natives and model train enthusiasts Roger and Nelly Hartmann fell in love with New Hampshires Mount Washington Valley. Three years later, they moved their extensive train collection and hobby shop into two new 8,000-square-foot buildings" -- The Boston Globe

The Hartmann complex includes the museum, a cafe (I didn't see where this was), a crafts store, a hobby shop and an outdoor ride-on train.

We started at the museum which costs $6 for adults and $4 for kids. Which I guess is ok, with kids you might spend 45 minutes to an hour looking at the collections of model trains and collectible cars and airplanes. Right up front the staff sets the tone for the museum giving instructions on how the 10 or so layouts operate by pushing a button and then the trains run for three minutes and don't push the button multiple times and so on. In other words, don't break our stuff they seem to be saying. My son was interested in watching things move and not so much in looking at all of the display cases so if you went without kids you might spend a lot more time looking around then week did. Although the amount of stuff on display is kind of mind numbing. There is just so much to take in all at once. The museum might have been set up with some dividing walls to provide white space and give ones eyes a place to rest but then the staff couldn't keep such a watchful eye on everyone I suppose.

Of course after doing the museum kids naturally want to ride on the outside train. Unfortunely this is not included with the admission price and you can't directly purchase a ticket for the train. Instead they make you go into the hobby shop and buy some overprices item from a specific table (like a $7.50 bookmark). Then one adult and one kid can ride. Once in the hobby shop they cruelly make it clear to the parents of the kids that the store contains many "dangerous" and "expensive" items an kids need to be kept on a short leash. I guess by dangerous they mean to the parent's wallet.

This policy sets up needless problems between parent and child. 1. The child really just wants to ride on the train and just wants to get out of the store as soon as possible or 2. they want to buy a $600 train set that they see on the shelf.

Most of the stuff in the hobby store is extremely high end (i.e. expensive) European train equipment in the hundreds of dollars range. Since my son is getting older I was very interested in looking around the shop and thinking about bringing my trains out of the attic, unfortunately the shop did not have any kid friendly area to entertain my son so that I could take in all of the stuff in the shop.

My suggestion to the owners of the shop would be to carry kid friendly wooden train stuff like Thomas the Train. And provide an area where kids could play with the wooden train layouts. No doubt they would sell tons of this stuff and keep the kids in a safe area away from all of the "dangerous" and "expensive" adult toys.

If you don't encourage kids to get into model railroading then where are you going to get your future customers???

Over all the place is great especially if you are into model railroading but as the parent of a small child I felt uneasy being their because the staff seemed to be so uneasy with kids visiting the place.