Saginaw County's Castle Museum

Pictured above is the Castle Museum, which we visited when we toured downtown Saginaw two years ago.  And pictured below is also the Castle Museum, constructed by Lego blocks. 

We returned there Wednesday mainly because the Castle Museum currently has an “Inspired by Bricks” exhibition, which is the area’s largest Lego brick architectural display.   It was constructed by Scot Thompson, a registered nurse from Bay City who started working on the display in 2008.  He built with Lego bricks actual structures which are located in Bay City, Saginaw and Midland.  We have seen the landmarks of those three cities and Thompson has done a good job in reconstructing them.  Also located in this exhibit area is a movie running continuously on how the Lego Company started in 1932 from what was once a wooden toy company in Denmark, a very fascinating story!

 When we had visited the museum before it was near closing time two years ago so we just had seen a few displays of Saginaw County’s history on the first floor.   This time we made it to the basement of the building where there is a very large HO scale model train exhibit, The Castle Express.   We saw three trains running, each having about 20-30 cars.  The large layout has over 1000 feet of track.  The volunteer running the train commented to us that the Saginaw Area Module Modelers are very happy to have found a permanent home for their trains in the Castle museum.

 And for members of my family who perhaps may be reading this, I found in the museum a small display pertaining to the Lufkin Rule Company where our mother worked for about 7 years before her marriage to Dad.  The Company first started manufacturing board and log rules for the logging industry in 1869.  During the time my Mother worked there, roughly from 1931-37, the company had diversified into manufacturing an extensive line of measuring devices.    Lufkin Rule closed its’ doors in 1946.