Tampa's Glazer Children's Museum Unveils Train Exhibit Built for Every Kid

Glazer Children's Museum in Tampa unveiled a new interactive train exhibit Thursday, giving downtown Tampa families a hands-on attraction built with crawl-through tunnels and multi-level play surfaces designed for toddlers and wheelchair users alike. The exhibit, called the Suncoast Imagination Station, is now open on the museum floor along the Tampa Riverwalk.

As reported by WFLA, the museum held the unveiling event Thursday to introduce the new train setup to the public. The exhibit features customized train tracks winding through modular landscapes of buildings, bridges, and natural elements, and according to Suncoast Credit Union, it was specifically designed to foster spatial reasoning and motor skills across varied age groups and mobility levels.

A Five-Year, $125,000 Commitment

The train exhibit is funded through a $125,000 multi-year donation pledged over five years by Suncoast Credit Union, per the credit union's own announcement. That same partnership also gives Suncoast members a buy-one-get-one-free admission discount to the museum, stretching the sponsorship's benefit beyond the exhibit floor and into the ticket booth.

Suncoast Credit Union is the largest credit union headquartered in Florida, managing over $17 billion in assets after originating in 1934 as the Hillsborough County Teachers Credit Union, according to the Tampa Bay Chamber. The credit union serves more than one million members across the state, and the museum partnership fits a pattern of it backing local youth educational programs throughout Florida.

Built With Accessibility in Mind

The physical design choices behind the Suncoast Imagination Station go beyond typical train-table play. Crawl-through cutouts and tables set at multiple heights mean a toddler on the floor and a child using a wheelchair can engage with the same tracks side by side, rather than being funneled into separate play zones.

That inclusive approach lines up with the museum's broader push on access. Roughly 25 percent of all child visitors to Glazer Children's Museum receive free or reduced admission through its community access and Title I elementary school initiative programs, according to Capital Analytics. The museum partners with regional corporate donors to subsidize visits for low-income families as part of that effort.

A Museum on a Growth Streak

Sarah Cole has led Glazer Children's Museum as President and CEO since April 2019, having previously served as its director of education and programs when the institution first opened in 2010, per the Tampa Bay Times. The 53,000-square-foot museum originally opened along the Tampa Riverwalk on September 25, 2010, housing 170 interactive play stations across 12 themed areas aimed at children 10 and under, according to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The new train exhibit lands during a stretch of momentum for the institution. In May 2023, the museum expanded its third-floor space to display Big John, the world's largest documented triceratops fossil at 26 feet long and 10 feet high, under a three-year corporate funding agreement running through 2026, according to Mosaic. In February 2025, the museum also earned the No. 10 spot on USA Today's 10Best Readers' Choice Awards for Best Children's Museum in the country, its first national ranking and the only Florida museum to make the list, as reported by Florida Politics.

Anchoring a Busy Waterfront Park

Glazer Children's Museum anchors the 13.7-acre Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park footprint along the Hillsborough River, a public space that draws over a million visitors annually to downtown Tampa's primary hub for major cultural events. The museum also continues to diversify beyond its core kid-focused programming, hosting adult-oriented events such as Grown Up Night: Crafter Hours for guests 18 and older, which let adult community members use the interactive exhibit spaces after normal operating hours, per Tampa Bay Parenting. That expansion mirrors the museum's other recent additions, including a Got Books vending kiosk on Level 2 aimed at supporting early childhood literacy.