San Diego Model Railroad Museum

     As promised. I have once again gone to another archive that focuses primarily on the trains that ran throughout the United States.  The archive was located in Balboa Park in San Diego.  The museum is 28,000 square feet located on the bottom floor for of the San Diego History Center.  The museum is the world's largest operating model railroad museum. This unique museum contains four enormous scale and model layouts, built by separate Model Railway clubs, which depict railroads of the Southwest in O, HO, and N scales.  The term scale refers to the reduced size of a model in relation to the real life train. In addition, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum features a Toy Train Gallery with an interactive Lionel layout for children and state-of-the-art theater lighting.
    The library at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum is quite neat and is filled with books. Years ago the librarian created a classification system to keep track of each of the different lines that ran across the country.  Another amazing thing that I found while in the library was original train time tables given to visitors embarking on a train journey.

     Model railroading has a very rich history in San Diego, specifically in Balboa Park. Its origins date back to the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition when legendary model railroader Minton Cronkite was asked by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company to build a  replica of the AT&SF railroad system in the Ford Building, the present day Air and Space museum.

     This display from the Exposition paved the way for other model railroad clubs to become involved in Balboa Park.  The San Diego Model Railroad Club, founded in 1939, moved to different locations in Balboa Park until 1948 when they were offered a space in the House of Charm building.  They stayed in the in the House of Charm until 1978 when the building was condemned due to fire.  At the same time, the La Mesa Model Railroad Club was looking for a new location.  As both clubs were in need of a space the idea to collaborate and create a museum where each club could build and create their own layouts was developed. The city of San Diego offered the clubs a space in the newly rebuilt Electric Building (present day Casa de Balboa) and  the San Diego Model Railroad Museum was created.

In 1979 the San Diego Society of N Scale was invited to join the collaboration. By 1980 the collaborating clubs were in the museum space and working diligently to create their one of a kind layouts. They succeeded, and in 1982 opened their doors to Balboa Park visitors.  In 1998 the San Diego 3-Railers joined the museum’s collaborating clubs.

To this day the museum remains the only American Alliance of Museums accredited model railroad museum.

Click the images to enlarge

      

I hope that you enjoy some of these images.  The last two are my favorite.  If you look closely it is a small crash and chickens are running around.

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum

Amanda

Doris

This semester of graduate school I decided to intern at a local museum near my house.  The Temecula Valley Museum is having me create digital interactive exhibits to go along with their main floor exhibit.  The first one that I have been working on is dedicated to the trains that ran from San Diego all the way through Temecula to Colton.  This train was built in 1881 and the line opened in 1882.  It started in National City, San Diego and traveled up through Oceanside and into Escondido.  The train then went eastward and traveled through Fallbrook, Temecula, Lake Elsinore and continued its way to Riverside where it eventually meet in Colton to meet the Pacific and the Santa Fe Railroads.

The rail line that command this stretch of track was the California Southern Railroad.  While one of the companies in service for the shortest time, the CS connected San Diego north before the Ocean line had been completed in the early 1900’s.

So in order to create an exhibit I have to spend the time doing the research that is not always at the museum that I am working at.  So I took the time to get in contact with Bruce from the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum.  Bruce is the archivist at one of the largest train libraries this side of the Mississippi River.  The archive has what every train enthusiast could ever wish for.  All the information in original documents on any train that was used on any California line.

The Museum has amazing resources that not only include a complete archive, but also has the original Depot station, along with rebuilt engines, cars, and a wooden caboose.  Though I didn’t do it, the Museum also features a train ride down the original tracks of the Pacific Southwest.

While the museum is rather far south in the small town of Campo, it only took about two hours to get there and enjoy.  Not only does the museum have refurbished engines and cars, it also has the remains of trains used to rebuilt others.  It is a plethora of train memorabilia dating as far back as the 1850’s.

For any train enthusiast out there or anyone with little ones that love trains this is a great place to visit and experience.  Go, visit, ride and enjoy being in a true train environment.

Next week I am going to be visiting another museum on trains.  This one will be the San Diego Model Railway Museum in order to visit their archive as well.