Best Railroad Museum In U.S?

[dldance]

I tend to agree with RWM but I will take exception to the characterization of NNRY's passenger heritage.  When I was young, my nearly retired neighbot talked about growing up in McGill and riding the NNRY to school each way every day.  Coupled with the mine & smelter shifts that is a lot of passenger trips.

dd

[Railway Man]

wallyworld

After reading "best" 4-84 etc..l.I would be curious as to how my fellow rail fans would vote:

If the criteria for the best railroad museum in the U.S is:

1. Diversity of Collection by type

2. Capability to restore equipment

3. Presenting collection in historical context.

 What museum would you nominate? I cant make up my own mind, I am stuck between IRM, RR Museum of Pennsylvania and California State RR Museum. I purposefully left out accessibility to transit, the inclusion of demonstration trackage,  and museums limited to a specific type ( narrow gauge, trolley, interurban etc) in order to narrow the focus.

 

Thanks for specifying objective metrics.

1. Diversity of collection is hard to quantify, however.  If one discounts the museums that consist mostly of a vast collection of mouldering scrapyard refugees, perhaps the B&O Museum has made the best effort at being nationally representative.
2. Capability to restore equipment = money.  If you have money you can buy all the talent necessary, and do anything you want.  Debates on historical scruples are usually angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin exercises.  In that regard, the California State Railroad Museum is I think the clear winner.
3. Presentation in historical context?  Does that mean interpretation?  If so, for an indoor, static display, California has done extremely well.  But in my world, railroading is an outdoor game, and for that I think it's difficult to find anything more like a time machine than the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic, where even the employees are the sons and grandsons of railroaders, and they are running a railroad that happens to haul people, not a museum that happens to run trains.  Nevada Northern at Ely is one of the coolest rail shops on earth, but the NNRY and Kennecott Copper were never passenger-carriers of note, whereas the D&RGW did a land-office tourism business, and the C&TS has a main line through mountain and plateau whereas the NNRY museum doesn't have that kind of scope.

Probably I am not annointing the favorites of the people in the bleachers.

RWM

[EJE818]

Here are my top three.

1. IRM. They are the biggest railroad museum in the country. They have one of the largest and most diverse collections anywhere.

2. Nevada Northern Railway Museum in Ely, NV. Almost all of their engines, all of their rolling stock and all of their structures are original Nevada Northern equipment. This is probably the most original and untouched museum in the country, if not the world.

3. Steamtown. Steamtown seems to have one of the best kept fleet of steam engines in the country. You also have the Delaware Lackawanna running next to the museum with their own roster of museum pieces including three RS3s.

[wallyworld]

After reading "best" 4-84 etc..l.I would be curious as to how my fellow rail fans would vote:

If the criteria for the best railroad museum in the U.S is:

1. Diversity of Collection by type

2. Capability to restore equipment

3. Presenting collection in historical context.

 What museum would you nominate? I cant make up my own mind, I am stuck between IRM, RR Museum of Pennsylvania and California State RR Museum. I purposefully left out accessibility to transit, the inclusion of demonstration trackage,  and museums limited to a specific type ( narrow gauge, trolley, interurban etc) in order to narrow the focus.