Savannah RR Museum

[Dan85]

Recently I traveled down south and during that time I visited the Savannah RR Museum. Here are a few photos from the museum!

- Dan

















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[e-paw]

Seams like a cool place. If I'm ever down that way I'll check it out.

[eightyeightfan1]

Does look nice. Someday when I go visit my brother.
"Hey Bob...You didn't happen to see where I put the drill motor did ya?"

[radivil]

I was down there in mid-July. I remember standing in the one building where all the blacksmith's fires would have been and being glad I never had to work in that place. It had to be a hundred degrees that day, even without fires and hard work everywhere.

Liked that it was a change of pace from "here's some old equipment" to more attention to "here's some old buildings."

[Dan85]

It was definitely a neat place, but it still seems like they have more work to do. My girlfriend and I were the only visitors at the time - it was pretty dead. They did an awesome job preserving and reusing the warehouse across the street into college classrooms, though I neglected to grab pictures of those.

[radivil]

I was there around an hour before they closed on a thursday in July and there were around two dozen people there. And it was a fairly rainy day.

Savannah is a heck of a town. Too bad the River St Rambler is long gone.

[Dan85]

Savannah was quite nice (we came down from Charleston SC as that's where she is attending grad school). I especially enjoyed the river walk area - even that had trains too! (though according to the tour guide, they don't run through there anymore)

[radivil]

That stretch of track used to be patrolled by this guy:



Odd the best picture I could find quickly was a model. Anyhow, its a shame that its not in the museum down there. If you saw the trolley that runs on River St, you may have noticed it had green, red, and blue LED boards on the sides. That's where it got the light pattern and colors from. The switcher was also uniquely equipped with loudspeakers that played Dixieland music as a safety appliance.

Someone down there told me the city is negotiating with Amtrak to get service moved from the current station to the big Central of Georgia one downtown (currently serves as the museum). It would make it a lot easier for people to take the train into town, if you could walk from the station to the hotels.

Savannah is a dangerous place to go when planning a layout. A River Street-like area is a tempting but space devouring idea. The City Edge layout in this year's Great Model Railroads is a pretty good inspiration for a Savannah-like layout with a high line and street running, but instead of going through a nasty part of town, a tourist area. Now I wish I hadn't just thought of that too.

[Dan85]

I didn't know the history was so colorful! The tour guide said that when the train did go through there, it had on street parking on both sides, traffic, and tour buses! Crazy!

I'm a big fan of street running and trust me, the wheels were turning in my head for project ideas!

- Dan

[BR60103]

I have heard that there is a street car running in Savannah. It might have been running last winter when we were in the area, but I didn't see anything about it until later.

[radivil]

This is the only picture of it actually on River St that I could find.



Sure dwarfs that Explorer. On one hand, its probably best from a safety aspect that its gone but on the other hand, it sure would have been a sight for it to be heading down the street at the same time a freighter was putting to sea.