The museum owns and maintains a collection of 80 historic railroad equipment located on a 4-acre (16,000 m2) site.[1]
The museum was founded in 1975 when a club of local railroad enthusiasts decided to run passenger cars on Amtrak trains. Several local members purchased cars for this goal. In the late 1980s, Amtrak tightened its restrictions on passenger cars, making it too expensive for most private citizens to keep them up.
Though the Amtrak excursions ended, the cars remained as the core of the present collection.[2] At that point the goal of the museum changed and now focuses on the preservation of the equipment. Tom Holley, former chairman of the board, stated "Now the primary purpose of the museum is the collection of the equipment that belonged to the seven railroads then entered Cincinnati."
Pennsylvania Railroad E8 locomotive #5888 has been undergoing restoration for the past few years. A "theatrical" baggage car (the Juliet, one of 47 built by the Pennsy between 1917 and 1922) sits on the track beside the locomotive and will serve as a mobile staging area for the renovation. The museum also has a large collection of Pullman-Standard cars including the Metropolitan View built in 1938 for the PRR's Broadway Limited, and a BM70nb railway post office (PRR #6518) modernized for the same train.[3]