Travel Town

Travel Town Museum opens on December 14, 1952 in the northwest corner of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, emerging from a 1940s plan by Recreation and Parks employee Charley Atkins to add a full‑size steam locomotive to the park’s miniature railroad. The museum’s early years see its locomotives freely accessible day and night until fencing is installed in 1955 to deter vandalism, and a Union Pacific dining car is donated in 1954 for use as a birthday‑party venue. In 1965 the collection is reorganized and the park is formally rededicated, marking a major turning point in its development. The large fire‑engine collection departs for the Los Angeles Fire Fighting Museum in 2002, while the museum’s military‑aircraft holdings are transferred to other institutions throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the trade of a Vought F7U‑3 Cutlass to the National Naval Aviation Museum and the 1992 exchange of a Lockheed P2V‑3 Neptune and a Grumman F9F‑2 Panther with a museum near Fresno.