Arizona Transportation Museum

On my latest vacation, I had the opportunity to stop in at the Arizona Transportation Museum in downtown Tucson.  This is a volunteer organization that also runs the Old Pueblo Trolley site, but that wasn't open when we were there.  The mainline railroad part is located in what used to be a storage facility next door to the main SP depot in Tucson.  The main depot (not shown) is still in use by Amtrak.

Inside is a large collection of various artifacts, mostly concentrating on the SP, naturally enough.

A model of what the station complex used to look like:

But outside is the main thing, an SP 2-6-0 stored under this excellent roof structure:

The locomotive was built by Schenectady in 1900, just before the formation of Alco.  In later years, it was used as a yard switcher at Tucson, and was then a park engine for several years.  But it is still in good condition, and they have hopes of making it operational eventually.  They plan to UT the boiler, for instance.  Luckily it doesn't have a jacket.

I thought this was pretty amusing: there's a G gauge layout that runs all the way around the locomotive on the ground.  In Arizona you can get away with things like this.

The cab is open for display.  There's a volunteer on duty to keep on eye on things and answer questions.  The man I happened to talk to was from Elgin originally, before moving to Tucson, so he was familiar with IRM.  It's a small world.

This light string goes into the boiler over the firebox, and you can peer inside and see the staybolts, to a limited extent.  

Also outside is the control stand from a Geep.

So that was interesting.  But as usual, there's no place like home.