Railroad Museum of Long Island
Railroad Museum of Long Island | |
---|---|
The former Nassau-Suffolk Lumber Company, now the RMLI Riverhead location. | |
Terminus |
Riverhead, NY Greenport, NY |
Commercial operations | |
Name | Greenport Branch |
Built by | Long Island Rail Road |
Preserved operations | |
Stations | 5 |
Commercial history | |
Closed to passengers | Never |
Preservation history |
The Railroad Museum of Long Island is a railway museum based on the North Fork, of Long Island, New York, in the United States. It has two locations, a main location in Riverhead, and a satellite location in Greenport, west of the North Ferry to Shelter Island. Both facilities contain active model railroad displays and gift shops.
Riverhead
The Riverhead location of the museum is located in a former Nassau-Suffolk Lumber Company warehouse and showroom at 416 Griffing Avenue, east of the Riverhead LIRR station. It was used as a lumber yard as far back as 1885, (The Corwin & Vail Lumber Company), and from 1891 to 1969 contained a turntable, water tower, and pump house, (the Long Island Railroad - Riverhead Yard).
The location contains numerous rare passenger and freight cars as well as locomotives in various stages of restoration, some of which are the last of their kind. It also has a 16" gauge Allen Herschell Park Train riding train from the LIRR Pavilion of the 1964 - 1965 World's Fair.
Located in the Freeman North Exhibit Hall, a renovated warehouse on the property, is the Historic Lionel Layout, an "O" Gauge model train layout donated to the Museum by Lionel L.L.C. in 2009. The 14' by 40' trainset is based on the 1940s Lionel Showroom Layout from New York City. It was constructed by Lionel employees in 1992 and operated at Lionel's facilities at Chesterfield, Michigan through 2008.
- Preserved cars next to the LIRR tracks at Riverhead.
- Part of a preserved turntable.
- The World's Fair riding train.
- Closeup of the locomotive of the riding train.
Greenport
The Greenport RMLI site is located in the former LIRR freight house of the historic Greenport Railroad Station. Throughout its history, the freight house served as a branch of the United States Post Office, Railway Express Agency, and a storage facility for LIRR Road 'n' Rail buses. Today the station contains an old wooden caboose and a snowplow, as well as artifacts and photographs and other items of LIRR history.
- The former Greenport Station Freight House, now the Greenport RMLI location, shown in July 2007.
- The same freight house along Fourth Street in September 2015.
- Part of the other preserved turntable.
External links
- RMLI Official Website
- RMLI Property at Riverhead (TrainsAreFun.com)
- LIRR and RMLI stations at Riverhead and Greenport (Unofficial LIRR Photography Site)