This month's museum pick...

Rail buffs say California's train museum in Sacramento is the best in North America

The Magic of Steam Lives on

At noon on a summer day in 1991 along the banks of the Sacramento River, 25 railroad steam engines, ranging from a replica of Britain’s seminal Tom Thumb to a 500-ton American workhorse that had journeyed 1,000 miles from Wyoming under its own power, began blowing their whistles.

First the small engines – the replicas and restorations of pre-Civil War machines – began with high-pitched toots. Soon, alto shrieks and warnings from the mid-sized engines joined in. Finally, the big locomotives, with rumbling bass bellows, completed the ensemble.

For two minutes, hundreds of people, many of them old railroad buffs with tears streaming down their faces, listened as this fantastical collection of ancient steam machines huffed and hissed, seeming to plead, “Don’t forget us. Remember what we once meant to you.”

Visitors line up to view a fully restored 1870s passenger train.

The place where that magical cacophony took place was the California State Railroad Museum. Open since 1976, the museum, located next to Sacramento’s impressively restored Old Town along the banks of the Sacramento River, boasts North America’s finest collection of American locomotives and rail passenger cars from the 1850s on.

The museum, which features a working round-house and direct rail connections to California’s major rail routes, is architecturally impressive. The huge wooden structure evokes memories of old car barns where railroad mechanics would swarm over engines and cars, attending to them with great steel tools, manhandling them back into running condition.

The museum’s designers intended to heighten the sense of wonder visitors experience. Not only does the vast interior space give them an idea of the size and power of the machines they see lovingly protected there, the route visitors take through the museum is designed to provide dramatic moments. They are first guided to an auditorium to watch a short film on California’s railroad history. As that presentation climaxes, the wall behind the screen parts to reveal the Governor Stanford, a gleaming, stunningly restored 1862 locomotive that was built in Philadelphia and then disassembled and shipped 13,000 miles “round the horn” to Sacramento. As visitors gasp at the machine’s beauty, large doors swing open to the main floor of the museum, inviting them to go find other surprises.

Find them they do – everything from a meticulously restored private railroad car with linen napery and velvet-cushioned chairs to old 4294, a monstrous 750,000-lb. “cab-forward” locomotive from 1901 that stops most people cold in their tracks when they round a corner and first see it.

Admission to this landmark facility is a bargain: $3 for adults and children over 16. Children under 16 are admitted free of charge. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, every day of the year except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

In the summer, the museum serves as a depot for steam engine excursions along the Sacramento River.

 — Patrick Totty