Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum

Parrish, Florida: Nestled in quiet Parrish, Florida is a museum in which you do not only view the exhibits, you ride them as well. The Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum was founded in 1981 and takes guests on a 1 1/2 hour excursion on six miles of railroad formerly owned by Seaboard Air Lines.

The Museum has a quite a vast collection of railway equipment. The collection revolves around their locomotives with Florida Gulf Coast 1835 (Former Army 1835) being the workhorse of the group. The locomotive collection also includes: Seaboard Air Lines 1633, Pennsylvania Railroad 8604, Florida Gulf Coast 100, Cargill 61 and BEDT 12 Porter. In addition to the locomotives, the museum has several trains cars from various classes including: Pullmans, Coaches, Baggage Cars, Freight/Cargo Cars and Cabooses.

In addition to the weekend train excursions from Parrish to the Willow Train Yard and back, the museum offers several specialty train rides. In the past, the museum sponsored the following specialty rides:

Train Robbery- a staged train robbery featuring the infamous “Hole in the Head Gang”.
Von Kessigner Express- a World War II reenactment in which you are swept into a last minute escape by the German general’s troops as they try to avoid Allied capture.
Pumpkin Patch Express- a train ride to the pumpkin patch for games, hay rides and picking of a pumpkin.
North Pole Express- a train ride to the North Pole for a visit with Santa with carolers and hot chocolate along the way.
Civil War Reenactment- transport back to the day of the Civil War and see how important the train was to the war efforts.

We visited the museum in October 2009. You can see more photos of the museum on my photo site by clicking on the photo above or visiting the Florida Gulf Coast Railroad Museum photo page.