Nice surprise in Kyoto

Part of our travels around Japan in May / June of 2017 was to return to Kyoto to visit an area of the city that we had always run out of time to see in past visits.

Our destination was the bamboo forests in the Arashiyama area of the city.  We had stayed the night before at the hotel inside the main Kyoto JR station and the next morning took the JR Sanin main line to Saga-Arashiyama station.

During the short walk to the forest entrance I spotted a building just a short distance from the station that had this sign out in front.

Of course this caught my attention so we decided to stop in on the way back from the forest.

The Diorama Kyoto turned out to be rail museum with an operating HO scale Japanese prototype layout.   It went though day / night lighting cycles.

This layout also had the largest suburban areas I have ever seen modeled on a layout with trams running in some of the streets.

Trains were running continuously on several lines but there were also a couple of lines available for visitors to run a train after inserting a 100 yen coin so I gave it a go.  Great fun !