The Collection of the Museum of Transportation

From its beginning the Museum of Transportation was fashioned around important historical artifacts – preserving both local and national transportation history.

With over 70 locomotives, half of them “one-of-a-kind” or “sole survivors” of their type, the Museum has one of the most complete collections of American railroad motive power, and its collections of automobiles, buses, streetcars, aircraft, horse-drawn vehicles, and riverboat materials are constantly expanding to reflect the ever-changing nature of transportation.

The Museum’s rail and transit collections have grown to encompass more than 190 major exhibits. These include the mid-1800s Boston & Providence “Daniel Nason”; Union Pacific #4006 (“Big Boy”), the largest successful steam locomotive ever built; the diminutive “Charles H.”, a small steam engine from Chicago’s Lake Street Elevated rapid transit line that was cosmetically restored in 1996 to its original appearance; and the 6,600-hp, two-engine Union Pacific diesel #6944 (“Centennial”), built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division in 1971. The road vehicle collection of over 200 items includes a 1901 automobile built by the St. Louis Motor Carriage Co. (oldest of only nine such cars known to still be in existence), as well as the only operational Chrysler turbine car on public display.