The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum is contained — just barely — in a restored Victorian-era schoolhouse just a stone’s throw from the Historic National Road in Wheeling, West Virginia. An unrestrained celebration of toys and trains from childhood past, the museum includes a scale model of downtown Wheeling, a restored railroad caboose and ride-on toys including a vintage metal scooter, classic Marx Big Wheel, Green Machine and metal train engines. The undisputed visitor favorite: the operating train layouts.
And then there are the toys: Thousands from around the world are spread throughout nine different display rooms. There are the Doll Room with its dolls and dollhouses; the Western Room, featuring western and farm toys and scads of miniature figures; the Combat Room; and the Toybox, containing a hodgepodge of playthings that, according to curator Allan Miller, didn’t seem to fit elsewhere.
The interactive Train Room, the Ohio Valley Artifacts Room, the Temporary Exhibit Hall — at the moment housing “Dolls of the World” — and the Classroom complete the gallery lineup. A ninth room is currently undergoing renovation.
Among the oldest toys in the museum are a pre-1900 German-made Lehmann Tut-Tut windup car, circa 1906 Lionel trains and a cast-iron coronation coach possibly dating from the late 1890s.
Guided and self-guided tours, guaranteed to bring out the inner 8-year-old in every visitor, are offered of the operating O and HO gauge train layouts. The handicapped-accessible museum also has a family-friendly gift shop stocked with colorful replicas of toys, trains and Teddy bears, plus a hodgepodge of logo items including T-shirts, sweatshirts and mugs.