Western Pacific Railroad Museum

Category: Museum

Address: 700 Western Pacific Way, Portola, CA 96122, USA

Phone: +15308324131

Opening hours

Sunday: 10AM–5PM

Monday: Closed

Tuesday: Closed

Wednesday: Closed

Thursday: 12–4PM

Friday: 12–4PM

Saturday: 10AM–5PM

Reviews

Ed Gowland

Sep 23, 2022

If you are a train buff, you'll be in your element. Tons of history, great gift shop and you can drive a train!

Austin hodel

Sep 11, 2022

Awesome place to go. You can walk around pretty much the entire property and climb all over the equipment

Christopher Fetros

Sep 5, 2022

A great railroad museum that lets you do whatever you want in museum property. A guide once told me, "We're the opposite of Sacramento, their stuff is in great condition but you can't get close to it, while [most] of our stuff is in bad condition but you can climb all over it!" Also, some of the equipment is really cool, like the Mccloud River Boxcar (pictures below) and the 2001, EMD’s first turbocharged diesel. Some of the equipment could be in better condition, like the u30b, of which is the last one in existence but in terrible condition. It will be even better when the 165 is running again though. This is great museum, just hard to get to, but still come here (I come over 5 hours to go here so...)

Judy Comish

Sep 4, 2022

Tucked away in Portola California is the coolest Railroad Museum. I went up there today to check out this steam engine. I even took a ride around the track in a cable car being pulled by the steam engine. Oh my, it was awesome!! Lots of history and memorabilia in this museum.

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Questions & Answers

Is the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in conjunction with Union Pacific and BNSF?

Brian Falzon | Sep 24, 2019
Darryle Golden | Sep 24, 2019

Here is their website https://www.wplives.org/m_index.html

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Do you know of any Speeder car clubs in the Bay Area ? Or any Speeder car rides. I operated your Western Pacific locomotive in the past was lots of fun. Thank you for your time.

Hal Wood | Sep 24, 2018
William Phoenix | Sep 24, 2018

Two local speeder clubs are Pacific Railcar Operators and Motorcar Operator Operators. They are subsidiaries of NARCOA and all have web sites. They negotiate access by qualified operators to track of certain railroads. Please also visit Railspeeders for an informative section on operating speeders or motorcars.

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Does membership in the California railroad museum give us a discount

fred faber | Sep 24, 2018
Samuel Chambers | Sep 24, 2018

Yes. Members get a discount.

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My husband was an employee of WPRR for years and has a lot of memorabilia that he would like to donate. How would he go about doing that?

Karen Elmore | Nov 27, 2021
Western Pacific Railroad Museum | Nov 27, 2021

Karen - thank you for reaching out to us. Please contact us directly by email at the Historical Archive address on the contact us web page. (I answered this the day of your question, but Google did not post it because I included the actual email address in my answer which they don’t allow.) Paul Finnegan FRRS Webmaster

Are they doing the Christmas light train rides

Beverly hiles | Sep 23, 2021
Western Pacific Railroad Museum | Mar 27, 2022

Please note, we cancelled Santa Trains in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19. We plan to resume the long tradition in 2022 and operate Santa Trains in 2022.

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Is there a model train layout in the museum?

Dante Medori | Sep 23, 2021
Western Pacific Railroad Museum | Sep 23, 2021

There is. One item in our collection is a well known Z-scale layout of the Western Pacific built by the staff at Model Railroader Magazine in 1985-86. It operates in our Museum Store. Our volunteers are going to be doing some work on it for our hoped for reopening from virus shutdown in April 2021.

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