Trails and Rails Museum in Kearney, Nebraska

If you are one of those people who yearn for the days of trains criss-crossing the country, if you like learning about trains and all that surrounded the rise of these behemoths in America, if you like trains and the history of early transportation methods, you'll love the Trails and Rails Museum in Kearney Nebraska.

Trails and Rails Museum, 710 West 11th Street, Kearney Nebraska, has no flashy advertising or in-your-face signs. Trails and Rails Museum is what it is, a museum that actively promotes an important portion of American transportation history.

What always stood out for me as we drove down 11th street is the the huge 1903 Baldwin Steam Engine No. 481 that stakes this location as something worth checking out. But the train engine isn't the only thing that takes visitors back in time to the era of trains as transportation. The main Trails and Rails Museum building is located in the Union Pacific Depot built in 1898. The depot was moved to Kearney from the small town of Shelton where the ticket office and waiting room has been restored to it's original appearance.

The train depot baggage room is an historical exhibit of wagons, train and automobile transportation in and through the area. Trails and Rails Museum is also the repository for archival records, letters, diaries and rare photos.

Train memorabilia, artifacts, books, information, and souvenirs draw the visitors attention in the depot, but there is much more to the Trails and Rails Museum than the train engine and the train depot.

Trails and Rails Museum includes an Obenchain-Boyer Fire Engine circa 1920, the Loup River Freighters Hotel, built in the 1880s, where freight wagon drivers could stay when transporting goods, a log cabin, a 1898 church building, the first frame school building circa 1871 to be completed in the county and much more.

First established in 1974, Trails and Rails Museum opened in 1975 on land donated by Mr. & Mrs. Jack Hammer, Dr. & Mrs. Francis Richards, and Ruth Dier. Later more land was purchased to house the growing collection.

During the summer, Trails and Rails Museum is open from 10-6 during the week and 1-5 on Sundays. The rest of the year, the museum is open weekdays only from 1-5. Along with the usual hours, the museum offers special exhibits, tours for groups and school children. Throughout the year, Trails and Rails Museum offers other special holiday and other events.

While the museum focuses a lot of attention on trains, other early transportation is not neglected. It may not be about planes, trains and automobiles, but the museum does take us back to an earlier era of wagons, buggies...and trains.