Railroad Museums

Whenever you visit the western United States you're going to have many opportunities to visit railroad museums. Many are located in old historic train depots and others are in dedicated railroad museum buildings. Western Trips has visited several of these very interesting museums and we wish to share some of the fine displays we've come across.

CTC System on display in Tucson AZ

Some of the fascinating displays at several of these museums are of vintage railroad equipment. This was vital equipment for an expanding railroad system and equipment manufactured before the digital age although during it's time the equipment was considered state of the art.

Before the advent of today's Advanced Train Control System there were structures or sometimes called towers which housed a system of gears and switches that were used to keep trains on the right track and avoid disastrous collisions.

Railroad Control Panel Exhibits

If your road trip plans happen to take you to Tucson Arizona, you may want to stop by and see the switching control panel exhibit on display inside the Tucson Amtrak train station. The control panel shown above and to the right was manufactured by the Union Switch and Signal which was a division of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

 It is an old Southern Pacific Railroad Dispatcher's CTC Console. The "CTC" stands for Centralized Traffic Control. The exhibit shown here is a relay based CTC. Centralized traffic control for railroads began in 1927 with the New York Central Railroad. The CTC like the one shown here controlled railroad interlockings and the traffic flows in Tucson Arizona.

This CTC display and other old railroad artifacts are inside the Tucson Arizona train station in the Old Town area of the city. Also, the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum is also located in Old Town Tucson adjacent to the train station. The museum address is 414 N. Toole Ave. Tucson, AZ.

Railroad switch lantern lamp

Railroad Lamps and Lanterns

There was a time that railroad safety relied on the use of lanterns and lamps. This was the time before digital traffic control and GPS. This was also a time after semaphores were used to control rail traffic. Semaphores came into being during the 1860's. As far as the lamps were concerned, the color of the light pretty much told the story. Railroad lamps and lanterns communicated signals at night between trains and stations. Without a signal system set in place there is essentially no way for a railroad to operate.

Railroad lamps and lanterns came in a variety of styles. The lamp shown in this article is a color light switch signal lamp. This is entirely different than the single light railroad lantern where the positioning and or movement of the lantern itself  by the railroad man conveys a command.

Signal lamp and lantern styles and uses

The color light railroad lamps would be positioned at various points along the rail track. These were meant to be in fixed positions and not hand held. The lamps function was to tell the condition of the track ahead of the train. To give you an idea of how many different railroad lamps and lanterns there were and are, these include classification lamps, train order lamps, bridge lamps, marker lamps, and switch lamps.

A switch lamp's position was mechanically linked with the position of the railroad switch, so that the lamp automatically indicated which way the switch was aligned. The accurate position of the lamp was essential for a train to pass safely. The kerosene fuel for the lamp had to be refilled regularly by nearby railroad employees. Although kerosene lamps were still used into the 1950's, electric lighting for these lamps became common in the 1890s-1900s especially along very busy routes.

The diagram above shows some of types of railroad signaling and devices. A fine museum with a great collection of vintage railroad equipment is found in Frisco Texas, a northern Dallas suburb.  The Frisco Heritage Museum in Frisco Texas is a good addition to your Dallas or northern Texas trip planner. Part of the railroad collection at the Frisco Heritage Museum are china dining sets that were used on the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in their Fred Harvey dining cars.

Links to four additional Western Trips photo articles you'll enjoy are the famous Santa Fe Railroad Super Chief, the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad historic dining cars, a trip on Amtrak's Coast Starlight which operates between Los Angeles and Seattle. and Railroad Square in Santa Rosa CA

NM Rail Runner model train in Belen Harvey House Museum

The San Francisco Chief

The San Francisco Chief was a named train of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.

One of the best places to learn more about this train and the AT & SF Railroad is at the Harvey House Museum in Belen New Mexico. Belen is Spanish for "Bethlehem".

The museum is also home to the Valencia County Historical Society and the Belen Model Railroad Club which has an amazing model train display filling several rooms in the rear of the museum. If you're a model railroader then a stop at the Belen Harvey House Museum is a must stop if traveling near Albuquerque. Belen is located about thirty-six miles south of Albuquerque on Interstate 25.

The San Francisco Chief began operations in July of 1954. The route was the longest passenger itinerary offered at 2,554 miles between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. The route ran between Chicago and Amarillo Texas where connections could be made. Connections from Amarillo could be made to Lubbock and from Clovis New Mexico to Houston, New Orleans and Dallas/Fort Worth Texas.

Harvey Girls living quarters exhibit in Belen NM

From Clovis New Mexico the route followed the Belen Cut-Off straight across New Mexico to Belen, Gallup and then to Ash Fork Arizona, west of Flagstaff. At Ash Fork connections could be made to Prescott and Phoenix to the south. The town of Ash Fork was originally established as a siding for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad during the late 1800's, later to be operated by the AT & SF. From Ash Fork Arizona it was west to Barstow California in the Mojave Desert and then up to Oakland California via Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton California.

The Harvey House Museum in Belen is a great stop to add to your New Mexico vacation planner. In addition to this excellent museum, the Belen rail yards today are serve as the largest BNSF inspection yard on the southern transcontinental corridor linking Southern California and Chicago. When you visit the Harvey House Museum which faces the BNSF rail yard you'll see quite a lot of rail traffic. It's estimated that about 100 trains per day pass through the Belen rail yards. The BNSF operation today in Belen extends almost three miles in length.

In addition to the above named railroad museums, some very good books on the subject of old railroad operations and equipment include Walking Old Railways by author Christopher Somerville and History of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway by author Keith L. Bryant Jr. 

(Photos from author's private collection)