by Waverly Winchester, 11 years old, with a little help from my Little Brother Logan, 3 years old!

The Mom here! Seems like just yesterday we were having a spooktacular time at New York Historical Society’s annual Hallowe’en Family Party, but when we heard that Holiday Express was back for the holiday season and reimagined to celebrate the 100th birthday of Busytown author and illustrator Richard Scarry, we knew we just had to go back….and we just had to take Wave’s little brother (from another mother!) Logan.  Only problem was, he didn’t want to leave! But we’ll get to that later….                                          

Waverly here! I always love checking out New York Historical Society and I was very excited to go there with my little brother Logan, who is OBSESSED with trains! As soon as we walked in, we got our cute train ticket and immediately started checking out all the trains.  There were so many of them! I didn’t know what was more fun – looking at all the trains, or looking at Logan looking at all of them!

I also joined in the fun by crawling through the opening and joining the train scene!  It was really cool to be right in the middle of all the action… literally!

There were SO MANY trains, Logan was in Train Heaven! It was even cuter with all the Busytown characters showing us what life was like in Busytown so many years ago, in honor of author Richard Scarry’s 100th birthday!  We learned all about how trains and railroads kept the world…BUSY! Then we hopped on board some Busytown benches and pretended we lived in Busytown, too!

Then we looked at even more trains and Logan picked out the ones he wanted to get as presents!  Unfortunately for Logan, they’re not for sale. But      he got plenty of cool trains for his birthday,  so there’s no need to add to his already huge collection.

Then it was time to go downstairs to The DiMenna Children’s History Museum where Logan did his favorite thing in the world, play with trains…

While I did so many cool things, like relax and hang out in one of my favorite kids’ libraries, checking out lots of interesting books:  

Compared Old New York City to today’s New York City:

Played cool interactive games that taught me about tariffs, taxes, currency and more:

While Logan STILL played with trains and was really happy doing that! Then I went upstairs to watch “New York Story,” and saw some of the things I learned about early New York in school come to life on a huge screen with very cool effects.  My mom and I were amazed to see that John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair was right there in front of our eyes!  How cool is that?

It was time to go, but we still hadn’t seen the top two floors – we were so busy exploring and playing that we will have to go back someday and check those out – I definitely have to go to the Gallery of Tiffany Lamps someday soon….but it was closing time, so I went back to get Logan, but he didn’t want to leave! He kept saying, “No! I don’t want to go yet!” So we recommend that if you have a “Train Lover” like Logan, you should be prepared for him or her to have so much fun that he or she will not want to leave…good luck with that!  I always have fun and learn something new at New York Historical Society  where there is always something for grownups, kids, and little brothers, too!

Richard Scarry’s Busytown is on view until February 23rd!