Admission to EnterTRAINment Junction varies per package but the train museum starts at about $16.95/adult, $14.95/senior, and $12.95/child ages 3-12.
- Open: Mon – Sat from 10am – 6pm and Sunday from 12-6pm
- Location: (Map It) 7379 Squire Court in West Chester Twp, Ohio
- Phone: 513-898-8000
- Web: www.entertrainmentjunction.com
EnterTRAINment Junction is home to the world’s largest indoor train display. In addition to the overwhelming detail depicting an America shaped by the railroad as seen with large G-scale trains, there’s a kids’ playland, museum, and café, plus party rooms, shopping, and seasonal attractions at A-Maze-N Funhouse which requires an additional admittance fee.
Entering the building for the EnterTRAINment Journey is like entering a new world. The sky is dark and Main Street, complete with park benches and landscaping, is lit with streetlamps. There’s a town hall, sidewalk café, hotel, and 1930s train depot. Simply walk up to the teller at the depot and name your destination. Now, enter a historic journey through three distinct epochs in American history from the earliest days of steam-engine railroading to today’s modern diesel locomotives.
The EnterTRAINment Junction layout includes railroading’s Early Period (the 1830s through the Civil War to late 1890s), the Middle Period (1900 to 1950s), and the Modern Period (1960s to the present). Train tracks are bustling all around the visitor – below, at eye level and some even 11 feet in the air. There are carefully handcrafted cities, towns, sawmills and factories, forests, bridges, mountains, valleys, plateaus, intricate trestles, tunnels, trolley cars, and fast-traveling subway trains. A cascading 11-foot waterfall provides a dramatic backdrop for the entire area; water flows through canals and rivers into a large lake. Each train car is about the size of a loaf of bread.
The sophisticated design prevents sneak-peaks ahead, for around every corner is a surprising new scene. There’s plenty even an elevated platform provides a birds-eye view of much of the 25,000-foot layout where 90 trains may be seen chugging this way and that.
Visitors to EnterTRAINment Junction also become involved in the action with 13 interactive buttons (more still to come) along the EnterTRAINment Journey. Push a button to move a train along the tracks. Push another button to hear the haunting sound of a steam whistle of an Iron Horse rumbling down the rails. More buttons create the sound of the sawmill or reveille playing at the Civil War encampment or church bell pealing from an old wooden steeple. Visitors can also make cars and trucks honk as vehicles bustle between the tall buildings of a typical American city in the 1950s. Even a paperboy, at a push of a button, will call out from a street corner, enticing citizens to buy the latest edition.
