Visit to Arizona Railway Museum

We last visited the Arizona Railway Museum five years ago, and have some updates.  Their annual schedule is completely different from ours, due to the climate: they completely shut down during the summer, while November is a great time to visit.

Inside the entrance building there are several displays.  Among them is this dispatcher's panel from a local tower.

The nice thing about this is that they now have a recorded program to demonstrate exactly how the panel works.  It runs for several minutes and demonstrates how the dispatcher arranges a meet between trains, etc.  I took a video of just a few seconds:

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As the tape continues, the lights on the panel light up to show the signal aspects, how the trains move through the territory, and so on.  I thought this was quite well done and educational.

And then there are displays of various artifacts, such as track tools and china.

The museum got its start when the city of Chandler was donated this SP Consol many years ago, and a volunteer organization was formed to maintain it.  They then started to collect other equipment, and the museum is located on land leased from the city (for $1 a year, I was told.)  

The cab is accessible to visitors:

The museum consists of static displays, mostly about ten passenger cars that are open for walk-throughs and nicely set up.  There are two Santa Fe bilevels in the collection:

As usual, photography of the compartments is difficult:

This is the lower level of the dome car:

And here is the dome, of course:

It's a very impressive display of long-distance passenger travel in the immediate post-war period.

Then there are some older business cars:

The signal display:

This PCC is the only electric car, which came to Phoenix prior to the opening of the modern light-rail system.

And there are a couple of cabooses, including the party car:

And finally, here's an idea for B&G guys with paint brushes and time on their hands:

But in the end, there's no place like home.