- March 28, 2024
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In recent weeks, the whistle of a train has become an increasingly prevalent sound echoing along Park Avenue. Whether they realize it or not, the sound is connecting all who hear it to the founding of Winter Park.
With the arrival of SunRail, residents can easily make their way back and forth to Orlando and points beyond, much like in the early days of Winter Park.
To celebrate this connection to the past and the future, the Winter Park History Museum debuted its new exhibit “Whistle in the Distance: The Trains of Winter Park” on Thursday, May 8.
The exhibit follows the development of Winter Park as it grew around the railroad, from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present-day commuter rail. From its earliest days, Winter Park was built and later divided by the railroad.
Allowing for the exchange of tourists and citrus, the railroad was the city’s lifeline, a physical connection to and reminder of the outside world.
Even before the city was incorporated, trains were bringing dignitaries and ordinary citizens alike to discover the area’s beauty.
Visitors to the museum who take a moment to rest on the plush settee are soon transported back in time by local director Todd Thompson’s short film that dramatizes the early days of rail travel.
In addition to train memorabilia, there are period clothing pieces, representing what ladies may have worn while traveling. The remarkably well-preserved and beautiful Victorian-era dress on display belonged to Lydia Skolfield, the great-great-aunt of the museum’s executive director, Susan Skolfield.
If you ask Skolfield, though, the most important and interesting features of the exhibit are the larger-than-life images that span three walls.
“The large-scale images really bring history alive. By rendering them so large and in color, we give visitors an opportunity to come face-to-face with residents from a bygone era,” she said.
“They also give kids a chance to see that history was in color, not just black-and-white, as so many imagine.”
Skolfield said the museum has already had visitors stop by because they saw the banners for the exhibit from the windows of a SunRail train.
“There is a connection happening here from the people of the past to the present through these trains, both old and new in a very beautiful way,” she said.
Nearly a year in the making, the exhibit is a collaboration between the Winter Park History Museum and the train experts at the Central Florida Railroad Museum in Winter Garden, with many of the items on loan from them.
One special piece visitors are invited to check out is a large-scale model of the famous Union Pacific No. 119 train that made the westbound voyage across the country in 1869, completing the first trans-continental railroad.
The model, donated to the museum just days before the opening, holds a place of honor in the exhibit. Mounted on a table that is purposely designed to sit just at eye level for kids, the intricate model is meant to be touched (gently) and explored by pint-sized visitors, who can easily see every detail from their vantage point.
As the opening night came to a close, somewhere in the distance along the nearby rail line, the last train of the evening offered up its whistle – a sound echoing through time connecting the past with the present.