Las Cruces Railroad Museum

We decided to go geocaching in Las Cruces today and one of the caches lead us to the Las Cruces Railroad Museum. It is located in the 1910 Santa Fe Railroad Depot.  We made a quick find of the geocache and decided to take a tour of the museum.

Las Cruces Railroad Museum

 The building is the same as it was when it was closed a number of years ago.  The volunteer staff greeted us and we had a nice chat with two of them.  The lady in the picture was from Baltimore and retired to Las Cruces.  Her partner (not in view) lived in Hagerstown, MD which is a few miles from where our daughter lives.  Talk about a small world!

1 Ticket On The 3:10 To Yuma, please.

 The large object below is an actual train whistle.  It had a number of tones and was about 3 ft high and looked like it must have been very heavy.

 There are a number of railroad artifacts in the museum along with three operational model railroads.  One is set up for visitors to operate and is quite large.

 What do you think this large piece of machinery is used for?  Answer below.

 There was this beautiful stained glass window in the museum.  Gerry was attracted to it since she also does stained glass, but not this elaborate. 

 In keeping with the theme of the railroad museum and the surrounding area there was a very nice mural painted on the wall of the building across the street.

 There were a number of photographs all over the museum and this one sort of grabbed our attention.  If you travel out in the Southwest you will see numerous trains hauling their cargo east and west.

 The Wrigley model truck was great and fit into the decor of the museum.  It was about 2ft long and done to scale.

I was especially interested in the museum since it was part of the history of the Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Railway, since my great grandfather worked for the company in the 1870s.  I've been trying to find their payroll files for many years without success.  

The museum is small and can be seen in an hour or so.  There is also a caboose on the grounds but the sun was behind it and I couldn't get a nice picture.  Maybe next time.

The large hook like device was used to grab the mail bags as the train came through the depot.

 I also checked gas buddy to see who had the cheapest diesel fuel in the area and a Valero station about a mile away was the best.  I checked it out on google earth and it looked like it had easy access.   We drove by to verify we could get the motorhome into the station.  It was a good thing we did since the approach ramps were short and very steep and we couldn't drive the motorhome into the station.  Too bad since at $2.39/gallon, that was a great price for this area.

We plan on pulling out in the morning for Tucson and it looks like it will be a nice driving day.  It's been a long drive from PA to Tucson and we are looking forward to taking it easy for a few days.