Western Railway Museum

One of the highlights of our trip to California was a visit to the Western Railway Museum at Rio Vista Junction.  The first thing you see is the visitor's center, which is very impressive.  The building houses displays, offices, a theater, and the huge library section, which we'll see later.

Outside the three-car train was outside for a charter of some sort, and was about to be put back in the barn.

We'll see the interiors of these cars in a later installment.

And here's one of the Key System bridge units.

Interior of the 182:

The infamously cramped cab.  

But we'll cover the collection in future posts.   For now, we'll look at the facilities.  First, the guys wanted to show me the shop.

That's Jim Ward, who spent quite a bit of time showing us around.

This is the museum's first car; its ends are being rebuilt.

And a Sacramento Northern steeple cab, in the shop for maintenance.

This is a Birney truck, which is largely being rebuilt with many new castings.

Here's the pattern for one of the many parts of the built-up wheels.

And they proudly showed us the aluminum castings used for making the patterns.

This pallet has several new truck parts on it.

Here we're having lunch with Jim Ward and Ted Miles, both IRM members.

Then Ted took us on a tour of the library facilities.  Here he is with Alan Fisher, the chief archivist.

Everything is well-organized and very professional looking.

In the distance is Ted's wife Arlene, who also works on archiving.

Now we'll step outside and see the picnic grove area.

A flag stop at the north end of the property, with a train order signal.

The substation is actually an old portable sub, now inside its own little shed.  The car itself is being resided.

And here are some of the visitor displays.

There will be lots more coming up!