Georgia Railroad Museums (2026): A Complete Guide

Last revised: October 6, 2026

Georgia kept the shops, the chase, and two Western & Atlantic locomotives. At Savannah the Coastal Heritage Society opens the Central of Georgia repair complex, which the museum calls the oldest railroad repair facility buildings in the United States. At Duluth the Southeastern Railway Museum holds the state’s largest collection of rolling stock, with Savannah & Atlanta Pacific No. 750 on display. Kennesaw has the General. The Atlanta History Center has the Texas. Tifton runs Vulcan No. 5 at the Georgia Museum of Agriculture. Waycross has Old Nine, a Baldwin Mikado of 1912. Albany kept the 1913 Union Station and Georgia Northern No. 107. The train in the photograph is Heart of Georgia GP40 No. 1540 on the SAM Shortline at Cordele.

Which days the shops run a train, and which days Duluth has a crew, are posted by the museums. Confirm before you drive.

The 4-4-0 General on display at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History

The 4-4-0 "General", the marquee railroad-related historic piece at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. The locomotive is famous as part of the Great Locomotive Chase during the Civil War. Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History photo.

On this page: At a glance · Georgia railroads · Cordele · Savannah · Duluth · Kennesaw · Atlanta · Tifton · Waycross · Albany · Related reading

At a glance

Place	Town	What it is known for	Site
Georgia State Railroad Museum	Savannah	Central of Georgia repair shops, begun 1851. The museum calls them the oldest railroad repair buildings in the United States	chsgeorgia.org
Southeastern Railway Museum	Duluth	Largest rolling-stock collection in the state. Savannah & Atlanta No. 750 on display. Founded 1970	train-museum.org
Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History	Kennesaw	The General, Rogers 1855, a few hundred yards from where it was taken on April 12, 1862	southernmuseum.org
Atlanta History Center	Atlanta	Western & Atlantic Texas, built 1856, in the Rollins Gallery since May 2017	atlantahistorycenter.com
Georgia Museum of Agriculture	Tifton	Vulcan 0-4-0T No. 5, built 1917 for the Hardaway Contracting Company. Three-foot gauge	gma.abac.edu
Okefenokee Heritage Center	Waycross	Old Nine, a Baldwin 2-8-2 of 1912, in the Okefenokee Chief exhibit. Center opened 1975	okefenokeeheritagecenter.org
Thronateeska Heritage Center	Albany	Union Station of 1913, and Georgia Northern 4-6-2 No. 107 on the grounds	heritagecenter.org
SAM Shortline	Cordele	State-park excursions toward Plains behind Heart of Georgia locomotives, including GP40 No. 1540	samshortline.com · rides

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

Georgia railroads

Savannah answered Charleston with a railroad of its own. The Central Rail Road & Canal Company was chartered on December 20, 1833, after the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road reached Hamburg. That company became the Central of Georgia. It built west toward Macon and Atlanta, and it built the Savannah shops that are now the state railroad museum. The Southern Railway acquired the Central on June 17, 1963. The Central had used those shops until that year. Between Savannah and Atlanta the Central’s streamliner was the Nancy Hanks.

The Western & Atlantic was a state railroad. The Georgia General Assembly formed it on December 21, 1836, to run from the new town at the end of the line, which became Atlanta, to Chattanooga. Two of its locomotives survive. The General is in Kennesaw. The Texas is at the Atlanta History Center. The state still owns the right-of-way, and CSX operates it. Around those two roads came the Georgia Railroad and the West Point Route, the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line through the Plant System, the Louisville & Nashville, and the Southern. The state map is the Georgia railroads page.

SAM Shortline

The photograph is Heart of Georgia GP40 No. 1540 on the SAM Shortline at Cordele. SAM is a Georgia state-park excursion on the old Savannah, Americus & Montgomery, later a Seaboard line, from Cordele toward Americus and Plains. The railroad calls itself Georgia’s rolling state park. Heart of Georgia supplies the locomotives and the crews. Trains board at Cordele, including Georgia Veterans State Park, and at towns up the line. The office is 105 East 9th Avenue in Cordele. Which days the train runs, and which unit is on the point, are on samshortline.com and the scenic-train guide.

The Blue Ridge Scenic Railway leaves Blue Ridge on the old line toward McCaysville. The Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad loops the mountain east of Atlanta. The Azalea Sprinter is on the same scenic-train guide.

Georgia State Railroad Museum

The Coastal Heritage Society, founded in 1975, operates the Georgia State Railroad Museum at 655 Louisville Road in Savannah. The buildings are the Central of Georgia’s Savannah repair shops. Work on the complex began in 1851. Most of the buildings were up by 1855, and the blacksmith shop was finished that year. The Central used the shops until 1963, the year the Southern Railway took the company. The museum’s site calls the complex the oldest railroad repair facility buildings in the United States. A visit is the shops, a handcar, and walk-throughs of the rail cars. The exhibits take in railroad technology and the work of the people who kept the place running, including industrial slavery and segregation on a Southern railroad. Guided train tours run on days the society posts. Those days are on the Georgia scenic-train guide.

On the same campus, the Savannah History Museum occupies the former Central of Georgia passenger depot. Its collection includes an early twentieth-century steam locomotive. The Central’s corporate history is the company page, and the Nancy Hanks is the streamliner associated with the road. Open days for the shops are on chsgeorgia.org.

Southeastern Railway Museum

The Atlanta Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society founded the Southeastern Railway Museum in 1970. The homepage calls it Georgia’s Official Transportation History Museum and the largest rolling-stock collection in the state. The museum has occupied its present site since 1999, 35 acres and more than ninety pieces, at 3595 Buford Highway in Duluth. When a crew is available it runs a historic train and a shorter park train. The day is on train-museum.org and on the scenic-train guide.

Four steam locomotives are on display. The engine shown as General II is a Baldwin 4-4-0 of 1919, built as Red River & Gulf No. 104. It became Comite Southern No. 1 in 1950, went to the Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad in 1961, and was altered to resemble the General. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association gave it to the museum in 2007, and it arrived in 2008. Heisler No. 9 was built in 1924 for the Kentucky Lumber Company of Sulligent, Alabama. Campbell Limestone of Liberty, South Carolina, which had used the engine, donated it in 1979. Chattahoochee Valley No. 21 is a 2-8-0 Baldwin built in 1924 as Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia No. 201 and sold to the Chattahoochee Valley in 1935. Savannah & Atlanta 4-6-2 No. 750 was built by the American Locomotive Company in 1910 for the Florida East Coast and the Key West extension. After the 1935 hurricane the FEC sold it as surplus, and the Savannah & Atlanta bought it. The engine has appeared in Biloxi Blues and Seabiscuit. The railroad donated it in 1962.

Three more steam locomotives are stored. Georgia Power No. 97, a Porter 0-6-0T built in 1943 as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers No. 5050, is in cosmetic restoration. Georgia Power donated it in 1965. Gainesville Midland No. 203, a Baldwin 2-10-0 of 1928 built for the Alabama, Tennessee & Northern and later used by the Gainesville Midland until 1959, is stored and awaiting cosmetic restoration. Atlanta & West Point 4-6-2 No. 290, a Lima of 1926 with 74-inch drivers, worked the Crescent between Atlanta and Montgomery and later appeared in Fried Green Tomatoes. It is stored, awaiting cosmetic restoration.

The diesel the collection has lately put back in public view is Southern E8A No. 6901, an Electro-Motive locomotive of 1951. It was the last Southern locomotive to lead the Southern Crescent between Atlanta and Washington before Amtrak. It returned to Building 2 on May 16, 2026.

Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History

The Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History is the home of the General, at 2829 Cherokee Street NW in Kennesaw. Rogers, Ketchum, and Grosvenor of Paterson, New Jersey, built the 4-4-0 in 1855 for the Western & Atlantic. The locomotive cost $8,850. With the tender it weighed about 50,300 pounds. On April 12, 1862, James J. Andrews’s raiders stole it at Big Shanty, the town that is now Kennesaw. The chase, the Medal of Honor, and the engine’s later years on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis are the General page. The state railroad is the Western & Atlantic page.

The engine was retired in the early 1890s. It last moved under its own power in the 1960s, for the Civil War centennial. It came back to Kennesaw in 1972, a few hundred yards from the place it was taken. The Big Shanty Museum opened on April 12, 1972. In the mid-1990s the museum acquired the Glover Machine Works collection from Marietta, and that locomotive works is a permanent exhibit. A renovation that began in 2001 produced the present building, with the chase, the wartime railroads, and the Glover shops as the three standing exhibits. The museum is a Smithsonian Affiliate. Open days are on southernmuseum.org.

Atlanta History Center

The other surviving Western & Atlantic locomotive is the Texas, at the Atlanta History Center. The exhibit is Locomotion: Railroads and the Making of Atlanta. The Texas was built in 1856 for the state railroad. It returned to Atlanta in May 2017 after a year and a half of restoration by the Steam Operations Corporation at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer. It stands in the glass-fronted Rollins Gallery at 130 West Paces Ferry Road NW, and a visitor can board the cab. The General and the Texas are the two Western & Atlantic locomotives that survive. The center posts the hours.

Georgia Museum of Agriculture

The Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village, formerly the Agrirama, is at 1392 Whiddon Mill Road in Tifton. It opened on July 4, 1976. The railroad the village runs is Vulcan steam locomotive No. 5, a three-foot-gauge 0-4-0T that Vulcan Iron Works built in 1917 for the Hardaway Contracting Company of Columbus. The museum describes No. 5 as the only steam-powered train in regular operation in Georgia. Which days it runs are on gma.abac.edu.

Okefenokee Heritage Center

The Okefenokee Heritage Center is at 1460 North Augusta Avenue in Waycross. The center opened in 1975, on a pine woods campus it uses as an art and history museum for the counties around the swamp. The train on the grounds is the Okefenokee Chief. The locomotive in that exhibit is Old Nine, a restored Baldwin 2-8-2 of 1912, a hundred-ton engine. The City of Waycross says the name is the first settlement at Waycross, the ninth stop on the Atlantic & Gulf out of Savannah. That railroad later passed into the Plant System and the Atlantic Coast Line, and Waycross became the Coast Line’s shop town. The engine itself came from the Rockton & Rion Railway in South Carolina in 1973. With it the exhibit has a mail and baggage car, a Railway Express car, a passenger car, a caboose, and an early Waycross depot. The city identifies the express car and the caboose as Atlantic Coast Line. Open days are on okefenokeeheritagecenter.org.

Thronateeska Heritage Center

Thronateeska Heritage Center was incorporated in 1974 from the Southwest Georgia Historical Society, organized in 1969, and the Albany Junior Museum, founded in 1959 by the Junior League of Albany. The campus is Heritage Plaza at 100 West Roosevelt Avenue, on what the center calls Albany’s last brick street. Through the center’s work the Union Station depot was preserved, became the History Museum, and was listed on the National Register in 1975. The center’s about page calls it the 1913 Union Station, used by five railroads. Those roads were the Albany & Northern, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Central of Georgia, the Georgia Northern, and the Seaboard Air Line. The Science Museum, built in 2008, carries architectural features of the original 1926 Central of Georgia roundhouse on its facade, and it houses the Wetherbee Planetarium. A model railroad shares the visit with the depot.

Georgia Northern 4-6-2 No. 107 is on display. The American Locomotive Company’s Schenectady works built it in May 1911, construction number 50133, as Florida East Coast No. 88. It later carried the Georgia Northern number. Combine No. 38, built about 1914 for the Charleston & Western Carolina and transferred to the Georgia Northern in the 1930s, has been at the center since 2002. Volunteers restored it at the Savannah roundhouse. Open days are on heritagecenter.org.

Railroad museums in the United States
Georgia railroads · Central of Georgia · Western & Atlantic · The General
Southern Railway · West Point Route · Nancy Hanks · Louisville & Nashville
Seaboard Air Line · Atlantic Coast Line · CSX
Georgia scenic train rides · Blue Ridge Scenic Railway · Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad · North Carolina Transportation Museum
Tourist trains · U.S. railroad history
Neighbors: Florida museums · Alabama museums

Sources

SAM Shortline, samshortline.com: Georgia state-park excursion based at Cordele, 105 East 9th Avenue; Heart of Georgia supplies the locomotives; trains run toward Americus and Plains, with boarding also at Georgia Veterans State Park. The photograph is American-Rails file GSRHMGeep.jpg, 715×450. RailPictures identifies Heart of Georgia No. 1540 as an EMD GP40. Blue Ridge and Stone Mountain calendars follow the American-Rails Georgia scenic-train guide, the Blue Ridge guide, and the Stone Mountain page
Coastal Heritage Society, chsgeorgia.org, Georgia State Railroad Museum: 655 Louisville Road, Savannah, GA 31401; former Central of Georgia Railway repair shops; the site calls the complex the oldest railroad repair facility buildings in the United States; handcar, railcar walk-throughs, and guided train tours on select days. Society student material, August 2026: construction began 1851, most buildings completed by 1855, blacksmith shop completed 1855. Central of Georgia used the site until 1963. Coastal Heritage Society founded 1975, from the society’s December 15, 2025 Norfolk Southern donation release. Savannah History Museum, same campus: former Central of Georgia passenger depot, with an early twentieth-century steam locomotive. Central of Georgia charter December 20, 1833, dates of operation through June 16, 1963, and Southern acquisition June 17, 1963, follow the American-Rails Central of Georgia page. Western & Atlantic formation December 21, 1836, follows that company’s page
Southeastern Railway Museum, train-museum.org, about page and locomotive page: founded by the Atlanta Chapter, National Railway Historical Society, in 1970; the homepage calls the museum Georgia’s Official Transportation History Museum and the largest rolling-stock collection in Georgia; 35 acres at the current site since 1999; more than 90 pieces; 3595 Buford Highway, Duluth, GA 30096. General II: Baldwin 1919 as Red River & Gulf No. 104; Gulf Sand & Gravel, 1950, as Comite Southern No. 1; Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad, 1961; altered to resemble the General; donated by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association in 2007; moved 2008; on display. Heisler No. 9: built 1924 for the Kentucky Lumber Company of Sulligent, Alabama; donated 1979 by Campbell Limestone, Liberty, South Carolina; on display. Chattahoochee Valley No. 21: Baldwin 1924 as Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia No. 201; sold to the Chattahoochee Valley in 1935; on display. Georgia Power No. 97: Porter 1943 as Army Corps of Engineers No. 5050; donated 1965; stored, in cosmetic restoration. Gainesville Midland No. 203: Baldwin 1928 2-10-0, built for the Alabama, Tennessee & Northern, Gainesville Midland until 1959; stored, awaiting cosmetic restoration. Atlanta & West Point No. 290: Lima 1926, 74-inch drivers; stored, awaiting cosmetic restoration. Savannah & Atlanta No. 750: American Locomotive Company, 1910, built for the Florida East Coast; to the Savannah & Atlanta after the 1935 hurricane; donated 1962; on display. Southern E8A No. 6901: Electro-Motive, 1951; returned to Building 2 on May 16, 2026. Ride days depend on crew availability and are not copied as a timetable
Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, southernmuseum.org, and the City of Kennesaw museum history: 2829 Cherokee Street NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144; Big Shanty Museum opened April 12, 1972; Smithsonian Affiliate. The General: Rogers, Ketchum, and Grosvenor, Paterson, New Jersey, 1855, for the Western & Atlantic; cost $8,850; with tender about 50,300 pounds; taken at Big Shanty on April 12, 1862; retired in the early 1890s; last moved under its own power in the 1960s; returned to Kennesaw in 1972. Glover Machine Works collection from Marietta, acquired in the mid-1990s. The longer chase narrative follows the American-Rails General page and is not rewritten here
Atlanta History Center: exhibit Locomotion: Railroads and the Making of Atlanta; Western & Atlantic Texas, built 1856; returned to Atlanta in May 2017 after a year and a half of restoration by the Steam Operations Corporation at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer; glass-fronted Rollins Gallery; 130 West Paces Ferry Road NW; the cab can be boarded. The General and the Texas are the two surviving Western & Atlantic locomotives. A secondary-source builder’s name and an older Cyclorama location are not used
Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village, gma.abac.edu, attractions page: Vulcan steam locomotive No. 5, built by Vulcan Iron Works in 1917 for the Hardaway Contracting Company of Columbus, Georgia; three-foot-gauge 0-4-0T; the museum describes it as the only steam-powered train in regular operation in Georgia. Address 1392 Whiddon Mill Road, Tifton. Opened July 4, 1976, as the Agrirama. A second year on the same attractions sentence is tangled with the 1917 build and is not printed
Okefenokee Heritage Center, okefenokeeheritagecenter.org, and the City of Waycross: 1460 North Augusta Avenue; established 1975. Old Nine: restored Baldwin, 1912, 100-ton 2-8-2, named for the first settlement at Waycross, the ninth stop on the Atlantic & Gulf from Savannah. The Okefenokee Chief exhibit includes the engine, a mail and baggage car, a Railway Express car, a passenger car, a caboose, and an early Waycross depot. The city identifies the express car and the caboose as Atlantic Coast Line. The locomotive was brought from the Rockton & Rion Railway in South Carolina in 1973. That quarry railroad’s own history is not retold here
Thronateeska Heritage Center, heritagecenter.org, about page: incorporated 1974 from the Southwest Georgia Historical Society, organized 1969, and the Albany Junior Museum, founded 1959; Heritage Plaza, 100 West Roosevelt Avenue; 1913 Union Station preserved as the History Museum and listed on the National Register in 1975; five railroads. A 1912 construction wording in a secondary account is not used. The five names are the Albany & Northern, Atlantic Coast Line, Central of Georgia, Georgia Northern, and Seaboard Air Line. Science Museum, 2008, incorporates features of the 1926 Central of Georgia roundhouse. Georgia Northern 4-6-2 No. 107 follows HawkinsRails: Alco Schenectady, May 1911, construction number 50133, built as Florida East Coast No. 88. Combine No. 38 follows the Albany Herald, 2015: built about 1914 for the Charleston & Western Carolina, to the Georgia Northern in the 1930s, retired 1948, at Thronateeska since 2002, restored at the Savannah roundhouse

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

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