Colorado Railroad Museum

The Colorado Railroad Museum occupies a 15-acre railyard at 17155 West 44th Avenue in Golden, tucked between the cliffs of North Table Mountain and Clear Creek about 17 km (10 miles) west of downtown Denver. Founded in 1959, it holds more than 100 narrow and standard gauge locomotives, passenger cars and freight cars, and it is the place to understand why Colorado railroading looks different from railroading anywhere else in the United States.

That difference is a matter of terrain. The canyons and shelf grades of the Rocky Mountains made 3-foot gauge the practical choice, and the museum's collection is weighted heavily towards that 36-inch world - the Denver and Rio Grande Western, the Rio Grande Southern, and the short lines that fed them. The main building is a careful replica of an 1880s railroad depot and holds exhibits, a model railroad and a general-store-style gift shop, along with original photographs by pioneer photographers including William Henry Jackson and Louis Charles McClure and paintings by Howard L. Fogg, Otto Kuhler and Ted Rose.

Two working buildings anchor the site. The Robert W. Richardson Research Library, named for a museum co-founder, is one of the most comprehensive railroad reference libraries in the United States - timetables, employee records, engineering drawings, maps and more than 10,000 rare historic photographs - and it is open to museum visitors, not just researchers. The Cornelius W. Hauck Restoration Facility, opened in July 2000, is a working roundhouse with a 90-foot Armstrong turntable and radial tracks, plus an observation gallery that lets visitors watch restoration work in progress. A third-of-a-mile (0.5 km) narrow-gauge oval circles the yard and carries the museum's train rides.

The yard is the reason to bring a camera. Everything sits outdoors on parallel tracks with North Table Mountain's cliffs behind it, which gives you a real background instead of a wall - and it also means you are working with hard high-altitude sun. Early morning right at opening and the last hour before 17:00 give the light that makes the rows of narrow-gauge equipment read; midday flattens everything.

The Hauck roundhouse observation gallery is the frame you cannot get elsewhere: locomotives on radial tracks around a 90-foot Armstrong turntable, seen from above, with restoration work actually happening below. The depot replica and the loop track give you a clean three-quarter angle on whatever is running that day.

Time your visit to the motive power you want. A Friday puts a Galloping Goose - a 1920s automobile grafted onto a railcar - on the loop in daylight; Thursday, Saturday and Sunday put a diesel there instead; and the coal-burning steam locomotives only appear on Steam-Up and special-event days. The museum does not publish a detailed photography policy online, so ask at the depot before setting up a tripod in the roundhouse gallery or during a ride.

The headline machine is Denver and Rio Grande Western No. 491, a narrow-gauge Mikado of 1928 that returned to service in 2014 and is described as the largest coal-burning narrow gauge steam locomotive operating in North America. Rio Grande Southern No. 20, a Ten-Wheeler of 1899, made its public debut on 1 August 2020 after a long restoration and is the other operable steam locomotive on the roster.

Then there are the Geese. The Rio Grande Southern built seven "Galloping Goose" motors out of road vehicles to keep a bankrupt mountain railroad alive on mail contracts, and three of the seven live here: Nos. 2, 6 and 7. No. 7, built in 1936, was converted from a four-door 1926 Pierce-Arrow Model 33 and was the last Goose the RGS built. On Fridays through the summer season the Goose - not a diesel - is what pulls into the loading platform, which makes a Friday visit a materially different experience from a Saturday one.

Standard gauge is not neglected. D and RGW No. 683 of 1890 is the only surviving standard-gauge steam locomotive from that railroad, and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy No. 5629 of 1940 is the largest steam locomotive on the property. For anyone who cares about how preserved equipment is actually kept alive, the Hauck roundhouse and its Armstrong turntable are the real draw: a working shop you can watch from a gallery rather than a static display of tools.

This is an outdoor museum with indoor rooms, not the other way round. Most of the collection stands on yard tracks under Colorado sky, and you walk the rows; the depot replica, the library and the roundhouse observation gallery are where you go to get out of the weather. Many cars are open to climb aboard. Plan two to three hours, longer if you ride and longer still if you use the library.

The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00 to 17:00, and closes Mondays plus Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Train rides do not run every day the museum is open, and this is the single thing most first-time visitors get wrong. Through the summer season rides operate Thursday to Sunday, departing every 30 minutes from 10:00 to 15:00 with a crew break at 12:30; Friday rides are behind a Galloping Goose and Thursday, Saturday and Sunday rides are behind a diesel-electric. Outside summer - mid-January to mid-May, late August and October - rides are generally Saturdays only.

Steam is the exception rather than the rule. The coal-fired locomotives come out for scheduled Steam-Up and special-event weekends such as Wild West Days, Colorado Crossings and Harvest Haunt, not for ordinary operating days. If seeing No. 491 or No. 20 in steam is the point of your trip, check the museum's event calendar before you book anything else, and buy the combo ticket online in advance - it costs $5 per person less than buying at the gate on an event day.