All Aboard!

Southeastern Railway Museum honors vintage trains from Atlanta’s past

By Joe Earle

Randy Pirkle came across the Southeastern Railway Museum when he was looking for a place to do some volunteer work that would incorporate his love of history. “History and old iron go together for me,” he said.

Seventeen years later, Pirkle runs the museum as its administrator, and there’s plenty of old iron for him to visit in the displays at the 48-year-old museum of trains and transportation. It’s everywhere: vintage Pullman sleepers and steam engines tower near metal-wheeled tractors, historic yellow taxis, fire trucks and MARTA buses at the museum, which is located on 35 acres in Duluth.

The museum, designated the state’s official transportation museum, is operated by a nonprofit owned by the Atlanta Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. Its collection of railroad items alone features 90 pieces of rolling stock, including passenger cars, locomotives, box cars, cabooses, a mail car, a tank car and other railroad equipment, Pirkle said. It’s even home to a private passenger car called the “Superb” that was used by President Warren Harding and that served as his funeral train, carrying his body across the country after his death.

Why keep all this stuff?

“Educating the community about history ensures that history is not forgotten,” Pirkle said, “and [the museum] gives people a different perspective on transportation than just their time on interstate [highways]. It’s fun to see kids today, who see kids in the sense of ‘Thomas [the Tank Engine],’ as a cartoon entity. So many of their grandparents experienced trains as transportation — and you can still do that.”

The museum sprawls across four buildings, including a display building that once housed a factory where train cars were made and repaired. At its entrance, the museum displays the former Duluth passenger depot, which dates to 1871 and was moved to the site a few years ago. The facility even offers visitors the chance to take a short ride in a train caboose or in a miniature train that once operated at a zoo.

The museum also hosts special events, ranging from summer camps for kids to showings of the movie “Polar Express” around Christmas.

It hosts antique tractors and trucks for a day and has even hosted antique typewriter shows, Pirkle said, because typewriters were important to running the railroads.

The roots of the museum go