Established | 1964 |
---|---|
Location | San Antonio, Texas |
Coordinates | 29°32′53″N98°26′05″W / 29.548163°N 98.434766°W |
Type | Transportation Museum |
Website | txtransportationmuseum |
The Texas Transportation Museum (TTM) is a transportation museum located in San Antonio, Texas.
It was created in 1964 to help preserve artifacts and information about San Antonio's transportation history. TTM operates as much of its collection as possible, including many railroad vehicles on its own heritage railroad, the Longhorn and Western Railroad, multiple model train layouts, and many antique automobiles. TTM's goal is to provide an educational and entertaining experience which interprets how developments in transportation technology shaped and continue to impact daily life.
The museum was originally located at the Pearl Brewing Company in Downtown San Antonio and had used the tracks of the Texas Transportation Company. In 1967 the museum was granted use of approximately forty acres (16 ha) of what was then known as the Northeast Preserve, now McAllister Park, just north of the San Antonio International Airport on Wetmore Road.
The museum hosts three major events annually, an Easter egg hunt in April for Easter, "Spook-Track-Ula" in October for Halloween, and "Santa's Railroad Wonderland" in December for Christmas. [1] [2] [3]
Different areas, including a remodeled caboose, picnic tables, children's play area and a large outdoor pavilion can be rented for group parties. The children's play area includes a playscape consisting of a wooden steam engine and a metal scale-model diesel engine. [4] [5] [6]
TTM is a registered 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
The Longhorn and Western Railroad is the Texas Transportation Museum's standard gauge heritage railroad that operates on its property with no connection to the general rail system. The L&W consists of approximately 5⁄8-mile (1.0 km) of trackage in total, with its mainline that runs 1⁄3-mile (0.54 km) from the east and west ends of the property. [7] Visitors can ride the full sized diesel-powered train every hour on the half hour on Saturdays and Sundays, and Fridays during the summer or holidays. A steam day is held once a month where visitors can ride behind the museum's standard gauge steam locomotive. [8] [9]
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The railroad reached the Kansas–Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farmland from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress.
In United States railroad terminology, a troop sleeper was a railroad passenger car which had been constructed to serve as something of a mobile barracks for transporting troops over distances sufficient to require overnight accommodations. This method allowed part of the trip to be made overnight, reducing the amount of transit time required and increasing travel efficiency.
The Virginia and Truckee Railroad is a privately owned heritage railroad, headquartered in Virginia City, Nevada. Its private and publicly owned route is 14 miles (23 km) long. When first constructed in the 19th century, it was a commercial freight railroad which was originally built to serve the Comstock Lode mining communities of northwestern Nevada.
The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a 7+1⁄4-inch gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It featured the Lilly Belle, a 1:8-scale live steam locomotive named after Disney's wife, Lillian Disney, and built by the Walt Disney Studios' machine shop. The locomotive made its first test run on December 24, 1949. It pulled a set of freight cars, as well as a caboose that was almost entirely built by Disney himself. It was Disney's lifelong fascination with trains, as well as his interest in miniature models, that led to the creation of the CPRR. The railroad, which became operational in 1950, was 2,615 feet (797 m) long and encircled his house. The backyard railroad attracted visitors to Disney's home; he invited them to ride and occasionally drive his miniature train. In 1953, after an accident occurred in which a guest was injured, the CPRR was closed to the public.
The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, commonly known as the "Frisco", was a railroad that operated in the Midwest and South Central United States from 1876 to April 17, 1980. At the end of 1970, it operated 4,547 miles (7,318 km) of road on 6,574 miles (10,580 km) of track, not including subsidiaries Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway and the Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad; that year, it reported 12,795 million ton-miles of revenue freight and no passengers. It was purchased and absorbed into the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1980. Despite its name, it never came close to San Francisco.
The Lomita Railroad Museum is a museum in Lomita, California devoted to California railroad history. “Exhibits include a full-size steam locomotive with tender and caboose, and a station housing scale models, photographs and paintings of trains.”
The Fremont and Elkhorn Valley Railroad was a 17-mile (27 km) heritage railroad headquartered in Dodge County, Nebraska and, offered excursion services on the line. Its equipment is now owned by the Nebraska Railroad Museum.
The New Hope Valley Railway is a heritage railroad in Bonsal, North Carolina operated by the North Carolina Railway Museum, Inc., an all-volunteer, nonprofit, and tax exempt educational and historical organization.
TheNational Museum of Transportation (TNMOT) is a private, 42-acre transportation museum in the Kirkwood suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1944, it restores, preserves, and displays a wide variety of vehicles spanning 15 decades of American history: cars, boats, aircraft, and in particular, locomotives and railroad equipment from around the United States. The museum is also home to a research library of transportation-related memorabilia and documents.
The 5-mile (8.0 km) Reader Railroad was a tourist-only railroad operating in Hot Springs, Arkansas from 1973 to 1991. As a 23-mile (37 km) common carrier prior to May 1973, it was the last all steam locomotive-powered, mixed train railroad operating in North America. It operated trackage in Ouachita County and Nevada County, Arkansas. The five mile tourist railroad operated until 1991, when it could not meet the new federal safety regulations.
The Virginia Museum of Transportation (VMT) is a museum devoted to the topic of transportation located in Downtown Roanoke, Virginia, US.
The Museum of the American Railroad, formerly known as the Age of Steam Railroad Museum, is a railroad museum in Frisco, Texas. The museum has more than 70 pieces of steam, diesel, passenger, and freight railroad equipment; guests may walk through some of the equipment on guided tours.
McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park is a 30-acre (12 ha) railroad park located in Scottsdale, Arizona. It features a 15 in gauge railroad, a Magma Arizona Railroad locomotive, a railroad museum, three model railroad clubs and a 7+1⁄2 in gauge live steam railroad.
The Texas Special was a named passenger train operated jointly by the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad and the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway. It was the flagship of both these lines, operating between St. Louis, Missouri, and San Antonio, Texas, from 1915 until 1959, after which time the Katy changed the northern destination from St Louis to Kansas City after the Frisco discontinued service from St. Louis.
The Grizzly Flats Railroad (GFRR) was a 3-foot narrow-gauge heritage railroad owned by Disney animator Ward Kimball at his home in San Gabriel, California. The railroad had 900 feet (274.3 m) of track, and was operated from 1942 to 2006. It was the first full-size backyard railroad in the United States.
The Northern Ontario Railroad Museum and Heritage Centre is a rail transport museum located in the community of Capreol in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The museum's mandate states it is, "focused on the preservation of historical artifacts that pay tribute to the heritage of Northern Ontario and the history of the lumber, mining and railroading industries."
Chartered on June 6, 1903, the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway was a 200-mile (321 km) U.S. railroad that operated from Brownsville, Texas, to Gulf Coast Junction in Houston, Texas. It served numerous towns and cities along its routes and operated a rail bridge between Brownsville and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in junction with the Mexican government. The Brownie connected the citizens of Brownsville to nearby Corpus Christi for the first time on land rather than using water transportation.
The Colebrookdale Railroad, also known as the Secret Valley Line or colloquially as The Colebrookdale, is a tourist railroad located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The railroad operates between Boyertown in Berks County and Pottstown in Montgomery County.
The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.