The island of Galveston has endured a lot. From the Great Hurricane of 1900 to Hurricane Ike in 2008, the city has still remained a bright part of the Texas coast.
So of course for vacation we had to pay a visit to the island.
This visit was the first time in about 10 years that we had actually visited and stayed on the island itself, which is kind of a surprise considering we had been there a number of times before that “drought” began.
This time around we stayed at the Harbor House hotel, which is on the west side of the island closer to the port and downtown. It was kind of cool to stay on that side of the island and definitely a whole lot quieter too.
After visiting Schlitterbahn and Pleasure Pier on our first day-and-a-half there, we decided on the morning of day two to take the short walk through downtown to the railroad museum in town.
This was the second time we had been to the museum, but the first time I really remembered it. The museum building is great. It’s an easy visual to take any visitor back into the railroad’s golden age.
The rolling stock they have is pretty large for a typical railroad museum. Unfortunately, some of it is old and worn down, which Ike had a big hand in doing. But between the working Santa Fe “F Units,” that apparently will be used to help evacuate the rolling stock if another hurricane sets course for the island, the two steam engines on site and the passenger cars, it’s certainly worth the price of admission.
They also have two model layouts. Unfortunately, the HO scale layout didn’t have enough light for my zoom lens (grr), but they were still very interesting to look at nonetheless.
Overall, this is a pretty good railroad museum, and until the museum in Frisco gets built in finished, it’s the best in the state. It’s definitely worth a visit.
