I've talked a lot about "Get a railroad; Get land; Get carbarns." How does that work in the real world?

I want to know about OPERATING museums which purchase a SIGNIFICANT parcel (>15 acres) of land suitable for a fully featured museum site. And what do those museums do for the "railroad" part? Here is my tally so far.

Edit: and by "land" I mean a buildable parcel with sane aspect ratio, not the railroad RoW itself which is 80 feet wide x miles long. That doesn't count as land, that counts as railroad.

- Illinois Railway Museum - started with 22-ish acres and expanded to 60 for the museum proper and other holdings too. Relaid a 5-mile line on former RoW.

- Orange Empire Railway Museum - started with 20-ish acres and expanded to 60-ish. Built alongside about a 3-mile rail line.

- Seashore Trolley Museum - 25-ish??? acres, and they relaid a 1.2 mile line on a former RoW.

- Western Railway Museum - 22 acres next to a 22-mile railroad they later inherited.

- Steamtown - 16??? acres of awesome complete with a heck of a railroad.

I surely must be missing some. Which others?

I think IRM is up to 270 acres now after the last purchase of 89 acres a couple years ago.

NC Transporation Museum in Spencer NC has just under 60 acres.

Matt Bumgarner

This is a map of the IRM campus showing the various parcels and dates of acquisition. About 100 acres is in active development (The area east of Olson Road and west of the stream). The remainder of the property was acquired primarily as a buffer against encroaching suburban development, and is currently leased out for farming. If you include the acreage in the 300-foot buffer strip, the total is over 300 acres.

The B&O Railroad Museum has a substantial campus once you include the land along the "First Mile," the former Mt. Clare yard/shops site, plus the now-promised adjacent office building along Pratt Street. The newly-built Restoration Facility, plus storage sidings for lots of "pending" projects (yes, including PRR GG1 4876), occupies this acreage, as do some skeletal ruins of some of the B&O shops buildings, standing like Greek/Roman ruins. Given that they're not quite in the position to be able to "fence off" the entirety of this real estate, it's a bit questionable how much of this property is strategically available to them as potential "museum expansion," but at least they can exercise control of this property. The southern neighbor of about half of this property is Carroll Park, a Baltimore City park which houses the Mt. Clare Mansion. The northern neighbors are fairly rough urban types, including a few "historical" rowhouse slums that formerly housed B&O shop forces and their families in the 1800s, some of which have seen little updating since.

The Sumpter Valley Railroad has a little over 60 acres at the McEwen end of the line and we've relaid about six miles of mainline.

Taylor

The WW&F Ry Museum owns 9 acres at Sheepscot, and approximately 22 miles of the original ROW
-which in and of itself translates into 150+ acres.

Stephen

Heart of Dixie RRM in Calera, Al has about 40 acres of land on main campus. They also own 12 miles of R-O-W of the former L&N Mineral Line from Calera to Shelby. There currently is track on about 6 miles of it on which trains operate.
Plans are to someday (read money needed) have track all the way to Shelby.

Bill

Correction: Orange Empire started with 10 acres. This was expanded until today something like 90+ acres are owned. At several times over the years adjacent land was purchased to help provide both buffer and growth possibilities.

Our "main line" is 1.7 miles; with an expected expansion of 0.3 miles in the near future. With a whole bunch of additional track within the present core 50+/- acres.

Steamtown's got 62.5 acres with around 55 miles of mainline for excursions

Southern Forest Heritage Museum has 58 acres in the main site, and another 2 miles of old Red River and Gulf RR right of way.

Pete Schmidt's reply was excellent and included a very good map. To your original question which included 'barns', IRM has nine major rail storage 'barns' on their land which I think translates to two to three MILES of track under roof. Not bad for a volunteer outfit using no public money, but a lot of sweat equity. There are also more than a handful of other buildings, some moved vintage railway structures, the depot dating in part to 1851. I do not think any of this infrastructure investment would have been possible or prudent without holding your own LAND.

Bob Kutella

The Hocking Valley Scenic Railway has over 11 mile of ROW plus the train yard and 3 stall barn that can handle all of their motive power.

Traincrew

I still haven't been to IRM, but it's obviously a place that really 'got it right'. IRM impresses the heck out of me, honestly.

Seems to me a simple recipe for success for any organization is this: good people with a good plan. With those two ingredients in place, the land and car barns will follow.