Arkansas Railroad Museum

Pine Buff, Arkansas, is the home of the Arkansas Railroad Museum. It features ten or more full-size examples of train locomotives, cabooses, passenger cars, and a huge toy model train layout filled with HO scale towns, tracks and trains. Not only that, but there are large informative displays of all kinds of railroad yard controls, lights, instrument consoles, and telegraph equipment with detailed explanations of how all that kept the trains maintained and rolling. 

Click on the images to make them larger. 

The museum is housed in a large building that was constructed in 1894 and was a working train repair and maintenance facility for many years.

The pride of the fleet, so to speak, is the huge steam locomotive that was built right there in Pine Bluff, No. 819. It was named to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2003, one of the larger examples of Class L1 4-8-4 Freight Steam Locomotives. If you like to see rivets in steel, here are some photographs. Click on them to make them larger. 

Here is the spacious cab of the locomotive with firebox opening.

Rivets everywhere

Why so many rivets? Steam pressure is not something to underestimate.

A 4-8-4 locomotive has a lot of wheel on the steel.

More rivets

The museum also has a great selection of lights, signals, and radio com equipment for keeping the trains on the right track. 

 

 The museum spotlights the Cotton Belt Route train system, but Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Sante Fe train cars are also featured. 

A man powered track inspection rail rider.

 

If you've even wondered what the inside of an old red caboose looked like, here are a few pictures:

 

This is the upper level where trainmen can sit and look out the windows in the elevated mid-section part of a train caboose. 

For more information:

http://arkansasrailroadmuseum.org/

Trip Advisor

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2516.html