The Colorado Railroad Museum is a non-profit railroad museum. The museum is located on 15 acre at a point where Clear Creek flows between North and South Table Mountains in Golden, Colorado. The museum was established in 1959 to preserve a record of Colorado's flamboyant railroad era, particularly the state's pioneering narrow-gauge mountain railroads.

Facilities

The museum building is a replica of an 1880s-style railroad depot. Exhibits feature original photographs by pioneer photographers such as William Henry Jackson and Louis Charles McClure, as well as paintings by Howard L Fogg, Otto Kuhler, Ted Rose and other artists. Locomotives and railroad cars modeled in the one inch scale by Herb Votaw are also displayed. A bay window contains a reconstructed depot telegrapher's office, complete with a working telegraph sounder. The lower level of the museum building contains an exhibition hall which features seasonal and traveling displays on railroading history. The lower level also contains the Denver HO Model Railroad Club's "Denver and Western" operating HO and HOn3 scale model train layout that represent Colorado's rail history in miniature. The Robert W. Richardson Library houses over 10,000 rare historic photographs, along with other reference materials such as timetables, maps, employee records and engineering documents about Colorado railroads.

Collection

The museum has a large collection of narrow-gauge rolling stock and provides narrow-gauge train rides on special event days known as "Steam Up days". The museum also has ex-Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad No. 683, a coal-burning 2-8-0 "Consolidation" type steam locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1890, builders number 11207. It is the only surviving steam locomotive from the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. All of the railroad equipment is displayed outdoors. Display tracks are complete with a rare three-way stub switch, dual gauge track and switches and century-old switch stands. These tracks hold over 100 historic narrow and standard gauge locomotives and cars. The 1/3 mi oval of gauge track is used by trains on operating days. The museum's roster contains the following notable pieces of rolling stock:

Steam locomotives

Diesel locomotives

Passenger cars

Special equipment