Colorado Railroad Museums (2026): A Complete Guide

Last revised: October 6, 2026

Colorado kept the narrow-gauge mountain railroad in the metal, and a few standard-gauge giants with it. At Golden the Colorado Railroad Museum fires Denver & Rio Grande Western 2-8-0 No. 346, a Baldwin of 1881, and No. 491, a Mikado built in Denver in the spring of 1928, on a loop around a yard of three-foot equipment that includes Rio Grande Southern Galloping Geese. The same yard holds Burlington No. 5629. In Denver the Forney Museum of Transportation has Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4005 indoors, with Amelia Earhart’s Kissel and an 1888 Denver cable car in the same building. Pueblo kept Santa Fe 4-8-4 No. 2912 behind Union Depot. Castle Rock and Limon kept the depots. Ridgway kept Galloping Goose No. 4, and Craig kept David Moffat’s private car.

Which locomotive is fired, and which days the depots are open, move with the season and the shop. Confirm the day before you drive.

Rio Grande 2-8-0 346 leading a short excursion at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden in the summer of 1965

Rio Grande 2-8-0 #346 leads a short excursion at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, summer 1965. Baldwin built the locomotive in 1881. It is still at the museum. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Colorado railroads · Golden · Forney Museum · Pueblo · Castle Rock · Limon · Ridgway and Craig · Related reading

At a glance

Place	Town	What it is known for	Site
Colorado Railroad Museum	Golden	D&RGW No. 346, Baldwin 1881, and No. 491, built in Denver in 1928, on a narrow-gauge loop. Burlington No. 5629 in the yard	coloradorailroadmuseum.org
Forney Museum of Transportation	Denver	Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4005, indoors, with Earhart’s Kissel and an 1888 Denver cable car	forneymuseum.org
Pueblo Railway Museum	Pueblo	Santa Fe 2900-class 4-8-4 No. 2912, Baldwin, January 1944, behind Union Depot since 1994	pueblorailway.org
Castle Rock Museum	Castle Rock	Denver & Rio Grande rhyolite depot of 1875, moved to 420 Elbert Street in 1970	castlerockhistoricalsociety.org
Limon Heritage Museum and Railroad Park	Limon	Rock Island combination depot of 1910, still at the Rock Island and Union Pacific junction	limonmuseum.com
Ridgway Railroad Museum	Ridgway	Rio Grande Southern Galloping Goose No. 4 and Motor No. 1 on a half-mile loop	ridgwayrailroadmuseum.org
Marcia	Craig	David H. Moffat’s Pullman private car of 1906, given to the city in 1953, on downtown track	City of Craig

American-Rails.com does not operate these places and does not sell tickets. Confirm hours before you travel.

Colorado railroads

The railroad that shaped the state is the Denver & Rio Grande, chartered on October 27, 1870, by William Jackson Palmer and his partners. They chose a three-foot gauge for a line through the mountains. The company dates its operation from January 1, 1872. Palmer’s road built south from Denver, reached the mining country, and, by construction and purchase, reached Salt Lake City in 1883. What remained of the narrow gauge in the San Juans lasted into the 1960s. The Rio Grande Southern, the three-foot railroad around those mountains from Ridgway, shut down in 1951. North of Denver, David Moffat’s Denver, Northwestern & Pacific of 1902 became the Denver & Salt Lake after a 1912 bankruptcy. That railroad’s Moffat Tunnel opened in 1928 and replaced the temporary line over Rollins Pass. The Rio Grande acquired the Denver & Salt Lake in 1947. The Dotsero Cutoff, finished on June 15, 1934, tied the tunnel to the road west. The state map is the Colorado railroads page.

The Santa Fe crossed southeastern Colorado on the way to Raton and left a 4-8-4 in Pueblo. The Burlington came into Denver from the plains and left No. 5629 at Golden. The Rock Island met the Union Pacific at Limon and left the 1910 depot. Union Pacific operates the Moffat Tunnel route today. The passenger trains people cross the country to ride are scenic railroads on surviving pieces of that map: Durango & Silverton, the Cumbres & Toltec, the Georgetown Loop, the Royal Gorge Route, and the Pikes Peak cog. Their calendars, sold-out dates, and holiday trains are on the scenic-train guide. The places below kept the locomotives, the railcars, and the buildings.

Colorado Railroad Museum

Robert W. Richardson and Cornelius W. Hauck opened the Colorado Railroad Museum in 1959. Richardson had started the collection in Alamosa in the late 1940s, as the narrow-gauge companies quit. The Uintah closed in 1939, the Rio Grande Southern in 1951, and other short lines in the same years. The Alamosa building ran out of room. In 1958, with Hauck’s help, the collection moved to Golden. Richardson built a replica narrow-gauge depot as the main building. In 1964 the nonprofit Colorado Railroad Historical Foundation was formed to own and operate the museum. The mission on the history page is a tangible record of Colorado’s railroad era, and of the narrow-gauge mountain railroads in particular. The address is 17155 West 44th Avenue. The visit page describes a 15-acre yard. The Robert W. Richardson Railroad Library opened on April 12, 1997. The five-stall Cornelius Hauck roundhouse went up in 2000, with engine doors from the Rio Grande roundhouse at Alamosa and a 74-foot Armstrong turntable from the Burlington roundhouse at St. Francis, Kansas.

Two narrow-gauge engines carry the operating story, and the museum’s own locomotives page is the authority on both. Denver & Rio Grande Western No. 346 was built by Baldwin in 1881 and ran for the Rio Grande until 1947. While it was on loan to the Colorado & Southern in 1936 it wrecked in a runaway on Kenosha Pass, and the Burlington’s Denver shops rebuilt it. Bob Richardson bought it in 1950. The museum calls it the oldest operating steam locomotive in Colorado and says it runs at steam-ups. Denver & Rio Grande Western No. 491 is, in the museum’s words, the largest operating narrow-gauge steam locomotive in the Western Hemisphere. Stearns-Roger of Denver and the Rio Grande’s Burnham Shops built it in Colorado in the spring of 1928. It ran until 1963, went to the Colorado Historical Society, now History Colorado, and came to Golden on loan in 1985. History Colorado gave it to the museum in June 2013. It returned to service on August 28, 2014. The museum uses it with No. 346 at themed events. Ask which engine is fired before you go. A steam-up on the Golden loop is the museum’s own calendar. It is a different trip from the day in the San Juans.

Burlington No. 5629 stands in the same yard. The museum says it is one of only four Burlington locomotives of its type still in existence. The yard also includes Rio Grande Southern Galloping Geese. At a 2026 operating weekend the museum put Geese Nos. 6 and 7 in the parade with its own steam. The library, the roundhouse, and the day’s train are on coloradorailroadmuseum.org.

Forney Museum of Transportation

The Forney Museum of Transportation, in Denver, is a general transportation museum with one locomotive people cross town to see. The homepage describes a collection of more than 800 artifacts that began more than seventy years ago with a single 1921 Kissel. It is a 501(c)(3). The collection was J. D. Forney’s. In 1968 the cars and the rail equipment moved into the Denver Tramway Powerhouse, built in 1901 to generate electricity for the city’s trolley system. The museum’s history page says Union Pacific donated an Alco Big Boy shortly after that move. The featured-exhibit page dates the gift of No. 4005 to June 1970. The museum later outgrew the powerhouse and occupies its present building. Hours and admission are on the museum’s site.

No. 4005 is a 4-8-8-4, one of twenty-five Big Boys Alco built for Union Pacific. The museum says eight survive, and that No. 4005 is the one converted to oil in 1946 as a test, a trial that lasted through March 1948, after which the engine went back to coal. It is displayed indoors. The stairway to the cab platform is open, and the museum opens the cab itself on days it posts. The Big Boy that Union Pacific operates is No. 4014. The type is the 4-8-8-4 page, and the railroad is the Union Pacific. Around 4005 the homepage names Amelia Earhart’s 1923 Kissel Gold Bug, a Forney locomotive, a Colorado & Southern caboose, an 1888 Denver cable car, and a Denver & Rio Grande dining car. The Moffat Modelers keep an N-scale layout of the Moffat Route in the building and post the Saturdays it is open. The railroad piece is the Big Boy. The rest of the floor is automobiles, motorcycles, and carriages, which is why the museum sits on this list and on a car-museum list at the same time.

Pueblo Railway Museum

The Pueblo Railway Foundation was formed in 2003 and took over the collection of the Pueblo Locomotive & Rail Historical Society. The museum’s piece of national rank is Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe No. 2912, behind Pueblo Union Depot. Baldwin built it in January 1944, one of the thirty 2900-class 4-8-4s numbered 2900 through 2929. The Santa Fe page is the company history. The museum’s own account says wartime metals made the 2900s the heaviest Northerns built, and that No. 2912 went to work on troop trains in 1944 and 1945. On July 20, 1959 the railroad gave the engine to the City of Pueblo. It stood near City Hall for about thirty-five years. Construction of the Historic Arkansas River Project moved it. The city gave it to the society, and on September 10, 1994 it went to the tracks behind the depot, where it still is. It was added to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties on September 13, 1995.

The foundation’s mission is to operate, preserve, and display. Train days are the ones the museum posts. Tickets and the calendar stay on pueblorailway.org. The yard has other equipment. This page names the locomotive the city has held since 1959.

Castle Rock Museum

The Castle Rock Museum is the Denver & Rio Grande depot, a rhyolite building the historical society dates to 1875. Palmer’s railroad had built south from Denver toward Colorado City, today’s Colorado Springs, in 1871. The society calls that line the first narrow-gauge railroad in the United States. Castle Rock became the Douglas County seat in 1874, and the town wanted a depot. The 1875 station went up on Third Street, of local stone, with wide eaves and drop-pendant brackets. The stonework is dressed at the corners, the sills, and the lintels. In 1970 Bill and Joyce Murray bought the building and moved it off the tracks to 420 Elbert Street. They kept the ticket window, the baggage room, and the names railroaders had written on the walls. The Castle Rock Historical Society bought the depot in 1996 and opened it as a museum in 1997. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and on the Castle Rock Register of Local Landmarks in 1994. The room is a local-history museum inside a railroad building. The society posts the days.

Limon Heritage Museum

Limon was the junction of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific and the Union Pacific, on the high plains east of Denver. On June 28, 1910 a fire in the yards burned the depot then standing, along with freight cars and an oil house. The replacement, built later that year, is a one-story wood-frame combination depot on the triangle of land between the two railroads. History Colorado counts it among three Rock Island depots in Colorado that still stand where they worked. The Rock Island’s history is the Rock Island page. The building was modernized in the late 1930s. The Mid-States Port Authority gave it to the Limon Heritage Society in 1990. It is the centerpiece of the Limon Heritage Museum and Railroad Park, a complex the museum describes as five acres, with a caboose, a dining car, an 1894 one-room school, and the prairie exhibits in the newer gallery. The depot was listed on the State Register on December 12, 2001, and on the National Register on February 20, 2003. The museum posts a summer season. Check the year you are going.

Ridgway and Craig

The Ridgway Railroad Museum sits at 200 North Railroad Street, on a rail yard with a half-mile loop, in the town the Rio Grande Southern used as its north end. The museum’s own site is built around Galloping Goose No. 4 and Motor No. 1. Goose No. 4 came from the Telluride Volunteer Fire Department in May 2008. The museum finished the restoration in the spring of 2012 and calls the car, unrestored until then, the best surviving record of what a Goose looked like in 1951, the year the Rio Grande Southern shut down. Motor No. 1 shares the loop. The equipment can be seen in the yard when the museum is between operating days. Ride days are the ones the site posts, and they change with the season.

Craig, at the end of Moffat’s line, kept the car rather than a locomotive. Marcia is David H. Moffat’s private car, a Pullman of 1906. On August 1, 1953, Wilson McCarthy, president of the Denver & Rio Grande Western, gave it to the city. The Colorado Encyclopedia places it on a short stretch of rail downtown, owned by the chamber of commerce, which offers tours. The Museum of Northwest Colorado, in the old state armory, is the town’s history museum. The car is the railroad artifact, on its own track. The tunnel that finally put this country on a main line is the Moffat Tunnel page.

Railroad museums in the United States
Denver & Rio Grande Western · Moffat Tunnel · Colorado railroads
Santa Fe · Chicago, Burlington & Quincy · Rock Island · Union Pacific
Big Boy 4-8-8-4s · Union Pacific 4014
Colorado scenic train rides · Cumbres & Toltec
Tourist trains · U.S. railroad history
Neighbors: Arizona museums · New Mexico museums · Kansas museums

Sources

Colorado Railroad Museum, coloradorailroadmuseum.org, history page: Robert W. Richardson and Cornelius W. Hauck opened the museum in 1959; collection begun in Alamosa in the late 1940s and moved to Golden in 1958; Colorado Railroad Historical Foundation formed in 1964; replica narrow-gauge depot as the main building. Closures named on that page include the Uintah in 1939 and the Rio Grande Southern in 1951. Staff and visit pages: 17155 West 44th Avenue, Golden; 15-acre yard. Iron Horse News, Fall 2017, on the museum’s site: Robert W. Richardson Railroad Library opened April 12, 1997; Cornelius Hauck roundhouse, five stalls, built in 2000, with doors from the Alamosa roundhouse and a 74-foot Armstrong turntable from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy roundhouse at St. Francis, Kansas
Colorado Railroad Museum locomotives page: No. 346, Baldwin, 1881, in service to 1947, wrecked on Kenosha Pass in 1936 while on loan to the Colorado & Southern, rebuilt at the Burlington’s Denver shops, purchased by Bob Richardson in 1950; the museum calls it the oldest operating steam locomotive in Colorado and says it runs at steam-ups. No. 491, built in Colorado in the spring of 1928 by Stearns-Roger and Denver Burnham Shops, in service to 1963, loaned by the Colorado Historical Society in 1985, donated by History Colorado in June 2013, returned to service August 28, 2014; the museum calls it the largest operating narrow-gauge steam locomotive in the Western Hemisphere. No. 5629: one of four Burlington locomotives of its type still in existence. Museum train-rides page for 2026 Colorado Crossings: Rio Grande Southern Galloping Geese Nos. 6 and 7 in that weekend’s parade
Forney Museum of Transportation, forneymuseum.org, homepage checked October 2026: more than 800 artifacts; collection began more than seventy years ago with a 1921 Kissel; highlights include Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4005, Amelia Earhart’s 1923 Kissel Gold Bug, a Forney locomotive, a Colorado & Southern caboose, an 1888 Denver cable car, and a Denver & Rio Grande dining car; 501(c)(3). History page: collections moved into the 1901 Denver Tramway Powerhouse in 1968; Union Pacific then donated an Alco Big Boy; eight of the type remain. Featured-exhibit page: No. 4005 donated June 1970; converted to oil in 1946 as a test that lasted through March 1948; eight of the original twenty-five preserved; No. 4014 is the Big Boy in operation. Moffat Modelers N-scale layout is posted on the homepage. Hours and fares are on the admission page and are not copied here
Pueblo Railway Museum, pueblorailway.org, ATSF 2912 page: Baldwin, January 1944; class 2900, engines 2900–2929; the museum calls them the heaviest Northerns built; troop-train service in 1944 and 1945; donated to the City of Pueblo on July 20, 1959; displayed near City Hall about thirty-five years; moved behind Pueblo Union Depot on September 10, 1994; Colorado State Register of Historic Properties, September 13, 1995; Pueblo Railway Foundation assumed the Pueblo Locomotive & Rail Historical Society assets, including No. 2912, in 2003
Castle Rock Historical Society, castlerockhistoricalsociety.org: Denver & Rio Grande built Denver–Colorado City in 1871, which the society calls the first narrow-gauge line in the United States; depot erected on Third Street in 1875 of local rhyolite; Bill and Joyce Murray moved it in 1970 to 420 Elbert Street and kept the ticket window, baggage area, and wall names; society purchase 1996; museum opened 1997; National Register 1974; Castle Rock Register of Local Landmarks 1994. National Park Service: National Register reference 74000575, listed October 11, 1974. Denver & Rio Grande charter October 27, 1870, and operation from January 1, 1872, follow the American-Rails Rio Grande page. Salt Lake City by 1883 follows the American-Rails Rio Grande K-27 page
History Colorado, Limon Railroad Depot: built 1910 after the June 28, 1910 fire; wood-frame combination depot at the Rock Island and Union Pacific junction; one of three Rock Island depots in Colorado remaining at the original location; modernized in the late 1930s; given to the Limon Heritage Society in 1990. National Register of Historic Places, reference 03000038, listed February 20, 2003; Colorado State Register, December 12, 2001. Limon Heritage Museum, limonmuseum.com: depot of 1910, caboose, dining car, 1894 schoolhouse, five-acre grounds. The published street number disagrees between sources and is omitted. Seasonal hours are on the museum site and are not copied here
Ridgway Railroad Museum, ridgwayrailroadmuseum.org: 200 North Railroad Street; Galloping Goose No. 4 and Motor No. 1; half-mile loop. Goose No. 4 page: agreement with the Telluride Volunteer Fire Department; moved to Ridgway in May 2008; restoration completed in the spring of 2012; the museum treats the car as the 1951 appearance of a Goose. Rio Grande Southern shutdown in 1951 also appears on the Colorado Railroad Museum history page
Colorado Encyclopedia, “David H. Moffat Private Car (‘Marcia’)”: Pullman, 1906, private car of David H. Moffat; given to Craig on August 1, 1953, by Wilson H. McCarthy of the Denver & Rio Grande Western; chamber of commerce ownership; displayed on downtown track, with tours. Museum of Northwest Colorado, museumnwco.org: town history museum in the former Colorado State Armory. The car is not described there as part of that museum
Denver & Salt Lake and the Moffat Tunnel follow the American-Rails Moffat Tunnel page: Denver, Northwestern & Pacific, 1902; bankruptcy, 1912; Denver & Salt Lake; tunnel opened 1928, replacing the Rollins Pass line. Denver & Rio Grande Western acquisition of the Denver & Salt Lake, 1947, and the Dotsero Cutoff, June 15, 1934, follow the American-Rails Yampa Valley page. Scenic-train calendars are on the Colorado scenic-train guide

Confirm hours and which locomotive is on the property before you travel.

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