NATIONAL TRAIN DAY 2012 – RECAP

The weather was perfect, the sun was out and families from all over showed up to enjoy the day. 1,210 people attended this year’s event. That’s a 38% increase over the 750 people that attended the event last year. 

Our efforts to become a tourist attraction for Sioux City and helping the local Riverside area of town and North Sioux City economically are also beginning to pay off. We had folks from Omaha, Sioux Falls, Kansas City, Fargo, New Jersey and Minnesota all stop in to enjoy the museum. After spending a couple hours with us they were asking for directions to local restaurants, gas and shopping areas to which we gladly directed them.

We heard many positive comments from visitors about our new sign along Hwy 12 making it easier to find our entrance and about the new concrete walkway entrance and the new exhibits that were opened to the public for the first time during this event. Many first time visitors were surprised at what we actually had to offer. One family said, “We drive by this place all time and see the old buildings, but never imagined that you had all this going on inside the walls of these buildings. This is really a special place.” 

One minor setback to the original program plan, due to some unforeseen technical difficulties, we were unable to pull steam locomotive GN 1355 out of the roundhouse for display on the turntable. However, an alternate attraction was developed as we started up our 1943 built 45 ton GE switch engine and used it to demonstrate the operation of the roundhouse turntable by driving it on the turntable and taking it for a spin and driving back off the turntable 5 tracks later. We did this twice during the day to the joy of hundreds that watched.  For many this was the first time ever seeing the actual operation of a railroad turntable and for others it brought back found memories of days gone by.

Dr. Rudy Daniels gave a 50 minute talk about how important the railroads were to the development of Sioux City and other area towns. The turnout out for this was very well attended in that it was standing room only in the Blacksmith portion of the Machine Shop building were the speech took place. Our new Downtown Sioux City Railroads Depot Exhibit made a wonderful back drop for Dr. Daniels as he was dressed in a Milwaukee Road Conductors uniform standing in front of a wood paneled re-creation of a depot office complete with a wood roll top desk, telegraph machine, pot belly stove, and other railroad depot memorabilia.

Thank you to all that attended and to those that missed out, come on down any time. We are now open 6 days a week (every day except Tuesdays) and please be sure to check out our Upcoming Events tab on our web site for future events.