Is there any public transit to IRM on Friday's from either the Loop area or Ohare? I thought I remembered some information on IRM's site at one time, but don't see it now.

Is there anything going on on Friday Sept 18? It appears I'll have a free day between my Idaho audit, and the AREMA conference in Chicago.

Greg

I think that the closest public transportation to IRM is the Metra station in Woodstock, from which you'd need to take a 10-mile cab ride to the museum. I have seen Pace buses in Marengo but I can't find a bus route on their website so the buses I saw may not have been in service. September 18th is the day before Members Day (aka Museum Showcase) Weekend; the museum property is open but no operations are scheduled for that day, though you may catch some switching.

It's one of the great ironies of railway preservation that many of museums devoted in whole or in part to streetcars and interurbans are difficult or impossible to reach by public transit. There's a very good reason for this: most of the early museums needed cheap land, which usually meant "the boonies".
There are exceptions: Shoreline/Branford is on the bus line that replaced the streetcar line now used by the museum. Orange Empire has a local bus stop near the north end of electrification, and work is in progress to build a line into the planned Metrolink station which already has a bus terminal under construction. On the other hand, Seashore, the "mother church" of electric railway preservation, IRM and Western Railway Museum (Rio Vista Jct.) all require a taxi ride or a rental car, unless a museum member is available to pick you up. Back in 1977, I visited Ohio Ry. Museum; I took a northbound Columbus city bus to the end of the line, phoned the museum, and a member was kind enough to give me a ride the rest of the way. As part of the same trip, I went to the Brookins operation near Cleveland. This involved a ride on the rapid transit (now called the RTA "Red" line) to the airport, where it was easy to find a taxi for the remainder of the trip to Olmstead Falls. One museum I didn't get to in 1977 was the New York Museum of Transportation south of Rochester, and when I finally got there in 2007, I was glad I had a motor home with an almost-full tank of gas. Well worth the visit, but a real challenge if you don't have your own wheels.

That's not quite true - there is limited transit service to WRM for about another week!

WRM is accessible by public transit on Wednesdays through Fridays from Memorial Day through Labor Day (which is the period when WRM is open weekdays this year).

The "Delta Breeze" (public transit from Rio Vista CA to Suisun City) will stop at WRM. It leaves from the Suisun City railroad station, where it connects with the Capitol Corridor trains between the Bay Area and Sacramento..

http://www.rio-vista-ca.com/transit/documents/Rio_Vista_Guide_08f.pdf

Whether this subsidized service will survive California's budget woes is anyone's guess.

Always was my gripe with Wilmington, De.

They had bus service from Downtown to within walking distance of both the shops and station of the Wilmington & Western....except on Sundays, since Wilmington rolled up its' sidewalks at 5pm on Fridays. Saturday service was sporadic at best. Train service via SEPTA is also non existant on Sundays into DE, since the state, not SEPTA, pays for that service. Amtrak/cab? ...sure, if you want to shell out that much dough.

Well, let's see....

B&O Railroad Museum: has a bus stop on a one-way street right outside the main gate. You can take the bus from downtown or elsewhere in the city if you so choose to either that stop or one westbound a short block away. The only problem is that a LOT of potential visitors are the type that have never been on a city transit bus in their lives, or on a bus since, say, school days. Further, the Museum is JUST far enough from the major Inner Harbor tourist draws that walking (especially with a family) is a drag, but a cab or bus ride is seemingly too short to be worth the expenditure.

Baltimore Streetcar Museum: Basically a ten-minute walk from Amtrak/MARC/Light Rail Penn Station, as well as numerous bus line stops on Charles and/or Maryland Avenue. However, it's not an intuitive walk--no sidewalks for part of the way, and even some long-time city residents have no idea Falls Road exists for that segment. Lots of BSM members and volunteers come and go to the BSM by bus or transit, but they're by definition transit-savvy. A typical passenger on Amtrak would either never figure out how to get there, or never try it again after that initial walk. For what it's worth, the Museum is also along a bike route on Falls Road--my wife bikes there five days a week to and from work. The biggest aggravation? We can see the Light Rail on the other side of the Jones Falls (a creek) through the trees, but by geology/geography it might as well be in another country for all it's worth.

Ellicott City B&O Museum: Not transit accessible.

Many of the British excursion lines used to take pains to outline in their brochures exactly how to access their lines by transit--a savvy move in a nation where not as many as the USA happen to have cars.

The Museum of Transportation in St Louis County can be reached by public transportation. Start at the downtown Union Station Metrolink light rail stop, then transfer to a bus for the remainder of the ride. Takes about an hour.

However, it still requires a mile and a half walk from the bus stop along a two lane highway to reach the museum. Not an easy thing for families, and quite a trek in the Missouri heat and humidity for this old gaffer. When I AMTRAK down from Chicago to St Louie for the weekend, I usually rent a car to get around to the various sites, but I will ride the light rail for fun.

A couple interesting facts about this.

Fairfield is the county seat, and a major stop on the S.P. (Amtrak Capitol Corridor). Go east 10 miles on State Route 12 and you cross the Sacramento Northern railroad. And here was Rio Vista Junction. There is now one thing at Rio Vista Junction. The Western Railway Museum.

In the SN days, a bus was garaged at Rio Vista Junction for one sole purpose: shuttle service from the SN to two small towns - Rio Vista, 12 more miles east on SR-12, and Isleton 5 more miles. The bus shut down in 1941.

Rio VIsta and Isleton are in the middle of the Delta. (Delta Queen territory). The Delta Breeze (the new bus) mainly serves as a dial-a-ride paratransit service for the two towns. Which I believe is either motivated or required by ADA. You know, the "short bus" that looks like it's mostly wheelchair lift. Anyway, they noticed two things: a) their drivers spend an awful lot of time sitting around; and b) lots of people were demanding rides into Fairfield, and it's an hour trip. So! They did the obvious. Get max use of their drivers by *scheduling* runs into Fairfield. They're still a dial-a-ride; they will diverge somewhat off their route to handle dial-a-ride business.

And, with a well placed sense of tradition, they scheduled a stop at Rio Vista Junction. However, it's kind of a flag stop in the dial-a-ride sense; best to call them in advance and tell them you want to be picked up.