Exhibitions

Step back in time to a place where steam engines still rumbled through the countryside. Our Museum is housed in a 1910 Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Depot and is one of the most significant historic sites in Las Cruces. Exhibits include information on local Santa Fe Railway workers, railroad communication, as well as interpretation of the building itself. Romanticizing the Southwest: Santa Fe Advertisements, 1940-1959 is a temporary exhibit. It discusses how the Santa Fe Railway Company used advertising to entice travelers to the southwest.

In spring 2010, the museum acquired a c1918 wooden caboose. This caboose is believed to have worked the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway line before being transferred to the Fort Worth and Denver Railway in the 1960s. In 1968, it was retired at a rail yard in west Texas and sold into private hands. The new owners used the caboose for 40 years before gifting it to the Railroad Museum. The caboose is not open to the public as we perform a condition assessment, fundraising, and conduct a restoration project. The caboose is located in the lot just north of the depot and is available for pictures.

Also, don’t miss our model train room.  We have three model layouts, including one that you can run yourself. One of the HO model layouts was designed and built by students during summer programs at the museum. Another is a train table for tots. Our newest and largest layout was built over 2009 and 2010 from funds raised in response to a Challenge Grant from an anonymous donor. This HO layout depicts railroading in the southwest in the mid-1970s. It includes a switching yard, a vibrant downtown area featuring a few buildings from Las Cruces’ past, and outlaying farms and mountains. The model room also has display cases full of model trains by various makers and of different scales/gauges.