Tooele Valley Railroad Museum

You'll see this sign as you come up Vine Street.
Then take a left onto Broadway and park by the gate.

This weekend we checked out a train museum in Tooele that our boys loved. There are two popular things: 1)Big trains that they are allowed to climb on and go inside. 2) Model trains inside of a train car to watch.

We began our trip to the Tooele Valley Railroad Museum inside the actual museum. A volunteer guided us through and showed us all the items inside. We were surprised that the displays focused so much on mining, but that is a large part of the history in Tooele, so we learned a lot. There were some interesting items to see such as an old safe, a mine bike, and a replica train. Our boys were pretty good through the museum, but we could tell they were hoping for more train information than mining stories.

The musuem

Our tour guide showing us the safe.
Dad loved that there was cyanide inside that handle, if you messed with the lock,
the cyanide capsule would break and uh oh!

Part of the museum

For some reason, our boys thought this mine bike was so cool.

After walking through the small museum, we headed over to the train car that was open next door. Inside they have model train tracks set up and there were 4 different men working on the trains. They told us lots of things about their trains and the cars they used. All three of our boys loved watching the trains go by and looking at the track displays. Our seven year old loves to find all the little details they put up such as two elk up on the hill, or a girl riding a horse down the mountain. We spent quite awhile inside watching these trains.

Watching the model trains

Looking for little hidden treasures around the tracks

Then we headed outside to view the actual train cars and engines. We really liked that you could go inside a lot of the cars and see what they looked like. We climbed up into the engine and a few of the train cars. 

The only disappointment we had was there was no one running the train to ride. Usually, they have someone there with a little train for everyone to ride on. You could see the tracks weaving throughout the yard, but no train. We should have called ahead to ask.

The Tooele Valley Railroad Museum is a fun place for those train loving kids, and for the train loving adults, too. It's free, and open Tues through Saturday from 1 - 4 pm between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The model trains and train rides are only available on Saturdays though. Call ahead to make sure the conductor is there for the train rides. (435) 882-2836. The museum is located at 35 N. Broadway in Tooele, UT.

If you make the trip to Tooele, be sure to check out the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum and Pioneer Museum, which are just down the road.

The trains!

Inside the train car

Climbing on the engine

Running to see more trains.
See the little train track by their feet?