The recent post of the home-built diesel now on display in Blanca, Colorado got me to wondering about other small-town locations with railroad displays. I can recall ex-Soo Line Consolidation # 2412 displayed in a "park" in Columbus, North Dakota after being used by a local coal mining operation. The Soo Line Historical Society did not even know about the preserved 2-8-0 for many years. Just wondered what other rail displays are out there, in small and/or "off the beaten path" locations.

Les

I'm sure there are many examples. One I recall is the tiny Baldwin 2-6-2 of the Nahma & Northern, located in Nahma, a very much off-the-beaten-path small town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Alan Maples

Anyone who has ever perused an old copy of Victor Koenigsberg's "Steam Locomotive Directory," or J. David Conrad's two-volume follow-up. or even the two online databases of steam locos, and then added in "Captive Cabeese," may be utterly flabbergasted at what is "stuffed and mounted" nationwide or even continent-wide, in small parks hither and yon.

Fans of the PRR, Reading, and NYC will be green-eyed with jealousy of the multitude of UP and ATSF steamers that were donated to lineside towns hither and yon. Cabooses became the modern replacement as they were retired--and are much easier to transport for preservation as well. Then add in small industrial locomotives donated by factories, mines, and lumber companies. Add in the local stations preserved by civic or history groups that snap up an appropriate (and at times not!) caboose or freight car for display, and the task of documenting them all is, or would be, gargantuan.

Canada, of course, is aptly covered by the annual Canadian Trackside Guide, published by the Bytown Railway Society. Their own sale page at their website seems to be down at the moment, but it's readily found online:
https://www.locomotiveworks.ca/index.ph ... _2025.html

The folks at Dynamo Productions (and it is several of them, not one guy), on Facebook and YouTube, make a practice of hunting down many of the obscure, often forgotten displays out there (primarily steam) during their travels, and posting photo collages or videos highlighting them. Here are two recent examples from a trip to Florida for a US Sugar photo charter:

https://www.facebook.com/DYProd/posts/p ... w383LDXnml
(Carpenter-O’Brian Company, later Brooks-Scanlon, later Revell Crate 2-6-2 3 at Pioneer Park in Zolfo Springs, FL)

https://www.facebook.com/DYProd/posts/p ... E1ALmbRxtl
(Florida Phosphate Company 0-4-0T 2, Festival Park in Zephyrhills, FL.)

(Disclaimer: Dynamo Productions has paid for use of some videos and photos of mine, and often taps me as the "walking encyclopedia" of information on some of these locos.)

You're really opened up a proverbial "can of worms" or "rabbit hole" here.............

How many "Feral" cabooses are there... next to a preserved depot, in front of a railroad yard entrance, in a City park, or less on topic in someone's yard... I can count at least 12 within 50 miles...

Lets see, an entire caboose motel complex 38 miles away, a wonderfully restored ex-PRR as a driveway ornament 19 miles away, ......
And then this abomination......only two miles away
As a restaurant addition...... and gutted railroad tacky to 12 on a 10 scale.

If you are a Santa Fe or NYC fan, don't go there. Please.
https://cdn.restaurant.com/partner-imag ... photo3.jpg

I actually tried to buy it and lost the bid to them. It's like watching your pony go to the dog food plant.

I submit Merry Bros. Brick & Tile, Vulcan, 1917
Florence Museum, Timmons Park, Florence, SC
~Wesley

There must be thousands of them. (Corrected from tens of thousands.)

Within 50 miles of my house in Anchorage, Alaska, I can think of five, not counting a museum where there are a number of diesels and rail cars, and a War Department 2-8-0 that is under restoration and will be operational later this year. They are under the care of two different organizations, both in Wasilla. The others are an 0-4-0 at the Anchorage depot, an 0-4-0 at the former Palmer depot, a WWII War Department 2-8-0 in a downtown park, and an ex-Milwaukee RR rotary and WWII troop sleeper near Girdwood. The Alaska Live Steamers have an Alaska Railroad caboose on their site. I've lost track of them but there were also cabooses that used to be at a couple of McDonalds.

Thousands, maybe, but NOT "tens of thousands."

Here's a reality check:

SteamLocomotive.info reports 1,918 steam locomotives in the USA. A very safe guess is that for every one in operation or stored in a museum, there is another one in a park display. So call that a thousand, maybe 1,200 to err on the side of caution.

"Captive Cabeese" enumerated about 2,250 cabooses nationwide. Again, for every one preserved in a museum or on an operating line (see the two on the East Broad Top as one example), another is in private hands (backyard, caboose, restaurant, etc.), and another may be on public display. So let me be really generous and say 700? And a few of those "displays" are utter fakes built from kits.

When I got into this hobby around 1980, there were still known to be a couple completely abandoned steam locos to be found here and there or stashed on private property. West Va. Northern 18 and 19 in Pa., WW&F 9/Sandy River 6 in Connecticut, the "Lost Engines of Roanoke," the two at Eagle Lake, Maine, and a couple 20" gauge lokies on a hilltop above an Arizona ghost town. Today, for completely abandoned relics with trees growing up around them? We're down to the Northwestern Steel & Wire 0-8-0 in Galt, and maybe a few industrial lokies hidden in back shops or barns, plus a few questionable hulks here and there. (No, PRR 1361 doesn't count.)

Hi
Here is another in Groverton, NH at Covered Bridge Park, Pat

To make life easier: It's GROVETON, N.H., not "Groverton":

https://maps.app.goo.gl/mL6CngJ8UDq6Fm4ZA

Loco is Groveton Papers #5, Alco-Cooke of 1918. Wooden-exterior caboose is variously but inconclusively IDed online as ex-B&M, ex-Conrail, and "mystery"; it suspiciously looks like one of those aforementioned "caboose kits" I mentioned in an earlier post.......

I think you could actually start an 'ugliest dog' contest with some of the stuff that is out there, not necessarily neglected, but certainly misguided in result if not intent. Like my caboose posting....

What do I mean?

I'll give you a couple nominees:
1) The ex-CB&Q 0-6-0 that is STILL at Akron ex-Quaker Square, becoming a terrarium, but again, a Burlington 0-6-0 stuck in Ohio, painted up in green and red:
https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showP ... id=3220703
It's much, much, worse now, that's a 10-year old shot.

2) my personal prize winner, N&W 917 in Ohio.... (yeah we didn't get the tender, well, this should work)......
https://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showP ... id=3620413

How about EBT 3 in Alabama? I think that's a pretty heinous crime...

To continue the idea of small town rail displays, I ran across a website for one I had not heard of before. Town is Elkader, Iowa. They have put up a replication of the original Milwaukee Road depot (with various inside displays) and laid some track which includes MILW bay window caboose # 992057. Also on that display track is former USAX 40' steel boxcar #26875 which has been repainted as MILW # 30373, with a reasonably well-done lettering scheme.

Les

One of the "lost engines of Roanoke".

For the record, here is the population of some of the locations mentioned in this thread:

Blanca, Colorado 342 (in 2026)
Columbus, North Dakota 131 (in 2024)
Nahma, Michigan 464 (in 2025)
Elkader, Iowa 1192 (projected 2026)

Would all qualify as "small towns" I would think.

Les