On another e-mail list, I've been ranting about how only a scant few railway museums are accessable by transit. I wonder if I'm really right about that.

Roll call... can a person who doesn't drive a car get to your museum via public transportation city transit, Greyhound, scheduled paratransit etc.)?

I can speak for the Western Railway Museum at Rio Vista Junction, so named because that's where you got off the Sacramento Northern for a bus to Rio Vista. That shut down with passenger service on the SN in 1940. 68 years later, Rio Vista's local paratransit service (the Delta Breeze) decided to do a few scheduled runs into the county seat of Fairfield, and its nearby Amtrak station. Just for old times sake, they stop at Rio Vista Junction. Three times a day, five days a week, and you have to call to make sure they stop. Only works in the summer, when we operate Wed-Fri, and the schedules are pretty flimsy, but they're something.

During the summers, Metro, the transit operator in the St. Louis area extends the Big Bend Road Bus line out to the Museum of Transportation. The bus drops riders off in a loop right by the front door.

I've spoken to a few visitors who rode the bus, or a combination of light rail and bus all the way out from downtown, which in transit terms, it quite a hike. Still, it makes the place easier to get to if you don't have a car.

Neither the Bluegrass Railroad Museum in Versailles, Ky or the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven are accessable today by mass transit. Unless you want to consider taking a taxi from either Lexington or Louisville.

Almost forty years ago I took the EL electric line from Maplewood, NJ to Hoboken, then the PATH to NYC, subway to Grand Central, ex-New Haven to New Haven and a bus to the Branford Trolley Museum. Does the bus still run today?

We have weekend local bus service to National Capital Trolley Museum from two points on the Metro system. We have occasional visitors who use the service. And also frequent "kiss and ride" use by our surrounding neighbors. Having the bus service came in handy when we hosted the 1992 ARM convention. The hotel was also located on the bus line so we used that service in lieu of charter busses.

Wesley

Trolley Museum of New York in Kingston is on the CityBus line. We occasionally have a visitor or volunteer who will take Trailways from NYC and then the CityBus from Trailways station to the museum. The bus line does zig-zag its way across Kingston, so often people opt for the $5 taxi ride instead.

I may have been on that same bus and train with you, as that's how I made my 1st 2 visits in the summer of 1967 and the middle of August, 1968. The closest the bus gets today is 2 blocks from the East Haven end, and 1 long block from the Short Beach end of the line. Various trips take alternate routes that can make the walk as long as 6 blocks.

Thus far nobody has mentioned the New York City Transit Museum. It is in a subway station at Jay Street, Brooklyn.

Both the IRT and IND trains stop a block or two away.
Too bad that you can't ride the trains right into the museum station.

But then you can't have everything!

Ted Miles

Add Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Scranton Steamtown and trolley, Danbury Railroad Museum, Dallas McKinney Ave. trolley.
When Valley, Conn. Rwy. and New Hope, Pa. & Ivyland RR run the full length of their lines, they share a station with other passenger trains.

The best example I've experienced is the Ffestiniog - get off the modern British Rail train, walk across the platform, board the 2 foot gage steam train. It actually forms a good practical commuter link to get tourists between popular Welsh destinations as well as being a tourist attraction in itself.

Surprised Ted didn't mention the SF cable cars and the fleet of PCCs / Milano trams serving SF commuter trolley lines and carrying tourists just there for the ride.

Charlotte Trolley (sigh) actually shares light rail track - well, might - sort of someday? But it really isn't the historic trolley any more......or a historic trolley line, or actually much of an interpretive experience at all. It is popular with school groups, however.

dave

You can get to the Railroad Museum of Long Island on the Long island Railroad. both of our museums are loacted right next to the Long Island Railroad. It makes fof good tours. Start at Riverhead, take the train to Greenport and then back to Riverhead.



Anthony

With the possible exception of the New York Transit Museum, I think BSM has the best public transportation access of all. It's an easy walk from Penn Station, so accessible multiple times a day seven days a week by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. Also a short walk from the Central Light Rail line all day seven days a week. In fact a few Saturdays ago an acquaintance flew up from North Carolina to BWI, took the LRT and walked over to the Museum for a day of trackwork! Finally there are several trunk local bus lines nearby as well.

There are two bus routes from the Trolley Station in El Cajon directly to the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, CA. Unfortunately, they ooperate Monday - friday, and we are open Saturday and Sunday. Some of our volunteers come up by the local bus and spend the weekend.

B&O Museum: located on at least one or two bus lines (they changed them lately--I think #35 and #10 still roll past the Museum eastbound and one short block north westbound). The Museum for a short time had a replica "B&O" GM bus rolling between Inner Harbor and the Museum. I don't think you can get to the Ellicott City Station by MTA bus.

I have managed to get to the Wilmington & Western by DART bus from Newark, Del. on their Newark-Wilmington Kirkwood Highway route, but that was 20-[mumble] years ago; I have no reason to believe it couldn't still be done today, save for reductions in Sunday service.

Railroaders Memorial Museum: a short hike from Altoona's Amtrak station, which also serves as the bus center.

If I want to force the issue with increasingly obscure places or forced connections, how about the PRR tower museums at Huntington and Harrisburg, Pa., both Amtrak stops within walking distance of the station? Similarly, you "could" take MARC to Brunswick, Md. (which has a small storefront museum), or Amtrak to downtown Cumberland, Md. and the WMSR........

In Britain in 1991, I won a fairly substantial wager by departing London on a different routing from the tour group that was touring Windsor Castle, then hopping three BR trains and two local buses--the last a classic double-decker rolling through rural countryside--to catch up with the group at a rural station on the Kent & East Sussex, rubbing their noses in it by jumping off the bus and running back ten feet to nab a stunning trackside photo from the roadside fence as their train approached the level crossing and the bus was stuck in the queue!

It appears to be possible to spend a weekend at the Western Pacific Railway Museum in Portola CA by taking the Plumas Transit bus from Reno on Friday and going back on Monday.

http://www.plumastransit.com/reno_29.html

I'm afraid all we can offer is that you can take Amtrak to Connersville. You end up at the B&O station instead of ours on the NYC though. Not an impossible walk, but it is a walk.

How many museums would have Amtrak service (station) to their town?

David Farlow
Whitewater Valley Railroad