The City of Ogden, Utah has agreed to purchase the former Union Pacific station building:

Fox 13 News:https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/ogden-buys-historic-union-station-building-from-union-pacific

Hopefully this doesn't spell the end of the Ogden Railroad Museum and the other museums at the station.

Did you even read the article?!?!?!?

Quite the opposite--this hopefully should ensure the long-term future and security of the many museums inside the building, of which the Utah State RR Museum is but one (but perhaps the most prominent and significant).

Glad to hear this, the station is truly amazing for the museums they have there.

If you did read the article, you would recognize that Ogden did not purchase the former Union Pacific / Southern Pacific / Denver & Rio Grande Western union station, because they already owned the building. What they purchased was the land around the building. It's an important distinction, and it now frees the city to act on their long-planned shopping center and low-income housing developments.

Those of us who live locally and have a better sense of what's going on behind the scenes are justified in expressing concern. This is the municipal organization that evicted without warning all of its volunteer organizations from the property in early 2019, including the 40 & 8 society which was maintaining the Merci Car and the Golden Spike Chapter R&LHS which was restoring the 223 as well as providing security services and structural maintenance to the buildings, and since then the entire museum has languished. It's incredible how much decay can occur in only three years with no maintenance. The city has quietly stripped the Utah State Railroad Museum of its exhibits; visitors are now greeted with locked rooms, bare walls and empty cases.

Four years ago I wrote an entirely factual warning piece using only published news articles and the city's own development plan for the Union Station lot and was laughed at by certain individuals on this board. Since then 100% of the points I made have come true, and I feel vindicated in that regard.

Is this good news? Maybe, if they can come up with the bonds and debts required to build the new structures in a timely manner and move the museums into a brand-new building as they claim they will. But it being a government, and having lived in the area and experiencing the shady shenanigans Ogden City gets up to, and seeing the failed Gateway development in Salt Lake City which has gone bankrupt twice and completely ruined Salt Lake City's transit options and the historicity of the former Union Pacific station there, there is a lot to worry about. But that's just my opinion, and based on the reactions from last time, what I think is of no importance.

My wife and I visited the museum while passing through on October 23, 2021 (you gotta love cell phones and how they date your photos) and found no empty cases or locked rooms in the museum itself inside the station building. Was this still in place then and if so, where were these?

The Maintenance of Way room, which includes a locomotive cab with operations simulator, has been locked to the public for about a year now. If it wasn't when you went, then it was closed off shortly after.

The exhibit of Andrew J. Russell photographs was stripped from the entry hall to the museum several months ago. Before that, they took down the exhibit on Union Pacific conductors that was put together by their former archivist. Their archive and research room has been closed for about three years now and research requests are responded with denials - they have no plans to allow any kind of access to the archival collections. Current and former docents of the facility have been reporting exhibits removed entirely or partially with nothing put up to replace them.

I'm glad you visited a year ago - but I actually am a local resident, and spent eleven years volunteering in various aspects on the Utah State Railroad Museum Authority (a state agency, recently dissolved due to inaction on the part of most of its members), and on the Union Station equipment committee. I didn't make this stuff up last time and I'm not making it up this time either.

UtahJosh,

I think the millennium golden rule of railway preservation applies here: To help ensure success and avoid heartache, always own your own property, right-of-way, structures, and equipment. Then, once you've accomplished that, buy enough buffer land, abide by zoning rules, and be a good neighbor. Too many folks are walking on egg shells, rebuilding locomotives that are owned by governments or working on properties that they could be locked out of tomorrow.

I was not suggesting you were making anything up. I just didn't see any closed off rooms that looked like something should be open but wasn't, nor empty walls.
That said, I didn't see anything like a loco sim on our visit, so that must have been one of the closed spaces you mentioned. But I never noticed any closed doors on our visit.

It is a UP GP30 cab:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4809133

Wow, I would have loved to have seen that. Beats me where that was, as I wouldn't have thought there was some room somewhere in the museum that'd been sealed off when we were there.

It is a neat exhibit.
I last visited in 2017 and I cannot remember the layout of the museum. I want to say it was near the HO model train display.

They have a Kennecott Copper caboose inside the museum as well:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=4809129

The caboose, I saw. I'd never seen one cut away and installed in a building before.

Good for them to control their own fate. We visited during the Golden Spike 150th and enjoyed ourselves.

Reading the article I'm confused though. UP donated (?) only the building to Ogden and leased the land to Ogden until 2027. If the lease was not renewed in 2027 then the building went back to UP?

Might be 'good fences make good neighbors... if the city of Ogden misbehaves, the problems can be reviewed at five-year intervals... with teeth.