orange empire railway museum

This is a fascinating museum if you have any interest at all in trains, or street cars. We live in Los Angeles, and have been learning about the history of street cars in the city, and heard about this museum, located near Riverside, CA. The museum sits on about 100 acres in Perris, CA. There are at least four working train lines, and the volunteers that run the museum, tend to rotate the trains, so you will get some variety if you visit the museum more than onceThe volunteers are all nice and will give you lots of great history on the trains, and they offer free guided tours of their train warehouses. Kids will love this place, and so will adults.

This is a fun place to visit with children and educational, too. There are trains and trolleys from all over, mostly California, but as far away as Kyoto, Japan. On the weekends they run equipment that you can ride. There is a small shop with memorabilia. There is a large picnic area, food vendors are usually only there for special events. There is a fee to ride and for special events.

Educational learning about trains. A little pricey on tickets, artifacts, and food vendors. Great place for families with children. The train ride is ok. The train ride is less than a mile and doesn't tour through the town. Arrival early to get parking or you will have to park down the street at a school to walk and there is no shuttle service.

A really neat place to visit and easily spend the entire day. I spent about 5 hours there prerecording a podcast show and even with production goof ups still a wonderful day I hope to have more shows to follow (151) Orange Empire Railway Museumhttp://www.blogtalkradio.com/s3production/2014/10/26/orange-empire-railway-museumThe non-profit Orange Empire Railway Museum has been preserving Southern California’s railway history since 1956. Home to over 200 historic railway cars and locomotives from Los Angeles and the West, the museum’s 90-acre site in Perris, CaliforniaOn October 25 and 26, ride a trolley to the pumpkin patch where you can pick out and decorate your own pumpkin.On a typical weekend (other than during special events), two city streetcars are running on the half-mile dual-gauge Loop Line, and another train is operating on the 1.5 mile standard gauge Mainline. The northern end of the Museum Railway is presently at 7th Street, although during certain special events trains operate all the way to the historic 1892 Perris Depot at 4th Street. Future plans call for regular operations to be extended to 4th Street as the depot area is rebuilt into the new Metrolink station and transit center. I have visited this museum before and really loved it and was more than happy when I was invited out there out to do a show about the trains , trolleys and the historyI had the privilege of spending the day with Mr. Norman Buchanan who served as my tour guide has we spent a good couple of hours walking around the museum I had to prerecord the show and found the recorder kept turning off so I will have to do some editing and repost the original show (or series of shows) so please stay tuned But I did want to pass along my thanks to the ALL the Staff, Docents, MR. Ken Schwartz for letting me wander around and especially to Mr. Buchanan for being my tour guide Pacific Electric Railway

A group of from our Corvette Club recently visited this wonderful museum of vintage trains and trolleys in Perris, CA. This place is amazing with 200 acres of land loaded with some very cool railroad and trolley equipment, most which is from Southern California. They started out almost 60 years ago by rescuing the old trolley cars from Los Angeles and kept growing with the addition of lots of Locomotives and railcars, many that were used in the movies. The coolest part is that they have several miles of track that they run both trolleys and trains on that you can ride all day for a small fee. The Museum its self is free to visit. They are also right across from the Perris airport that is one of the largest Skydiving centers in the country.

If you went to knott's Berry Farm before it became so high tech and loved it, you'll really like this place. It is out in the country in a huge park like setting with picnic tables. Admission to the grounds and parking is free. You could spend days here exploring the old trains and trolleys that used to ply the streets and right of ways of early California. Train enthusiasts will be in Heaven! Threre are several covered car barns to walk through. On weekends there are trolley rides on the Los Angeles Railway streetcars and Pacific Electric streetcars. You can even see the collection of trains once owned by Ward Kimball (Disney friend, illustrator, and inspiration for the creation of Disneyland). The entire park must be over 60 acres. Go in the fall and spring when the weather is nice.

Great little self guided tour of the grounds and train rides kept us busy.Bring a picnic basket and set up on the lawns!

I attended the Rods-N-Rails Event in June. If you like rail transportation then you'll love this place. Since my purpose of attending this event was to do photography, I found a lot to photograph here as there are ALL kinds of trains here. There is a trolley that runs back and forth between two points on the property. This would be a great place to take kids so that they can see a train close up. For this event, there were a lot of food choices. I would go to this event again, and I would go just to see the trains again.

We ran across this museum while searching for things to do in the Inland Empire. We went on a weekday (when the trains were not running) and were the only visitors there. A very friendly volunteer took us on our own personal tour of the trains. They have a very extensive collection of trains, especially electric trains and street cars and the volunteers were very knowledgable. Though it would be fun to go on a weekend and ride the trains, it was nice having the place to ourselves, and leisure to wander and look around.

I don't remember how I found out about Orange Empire Railway Museum, but it surprised me that I had never heard of it.It has an astounding collection of street cars -- many of them rescued from Los Angeles's long gone lines. They have a variety of rolling stock from trains.Volunteers have achieved some impressive restoration on many of the pieces of the collection.Kids (and many an adult, including myself) will enjoy several of the operating pieces that they run on the weekends. There's plenty of places to picnic.Expectations: unlike California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, this museum is not financed by the state with hundreds of millions of dollars. Also, unlike Disneyland, this is not a corporate funded theme park. This museum is the product of average people trying to preserve a small piece of our history that they love. What they've achieved, and what they continue to achieve, is inspiring and impressive.I've been to a number of railroad museums. Many are collections of old rolling-stock in decay, and lacking much funding to change that. Through the use of teams of volunteers, there has some fantastic restoration at Orange Empire. A volunteer at the museum told me he thinks they have about another 200 years worth of work to go. I believe it. But they've made some dents on the to-do list. It's worth seeing.If you want to learn more, chat up some of the volunteers. I found them excited to share their passion and show the results of their hard work. And I am thankful for it all.If you really want to see the place, call ahead and arrange for a guided tour. They're available (I think for a fee). I might try that on another visit.

Don't bother joining. They take your money, make promises, and then ignore membership inquiries. Very disappointing customer service. Actually, there is no customer service.

Our first two trips here were on busy Saturdays the most recent a weekday. They host an annual Day out with Thomas the Tank Engine and it is spectacular! The park is jam packed with kids and their parents with tons of hands on activities, photo opportunities, and of course train rides. I have attended DOWT in other places and the kids enjoy this one the most.They are open on most Saturdays and Sundays where they run their big engine as well as a number of trolleys and smaller engines. The weekend we went they had some food vendors, live music, and it was full of both kids and adults.Our most recent trip was on a Thursday in June. Not including employees there were 5 people there (three of them were in my party). I was worried at first because I know this is a large museum. But not only was it free but we had a docent give us a personal tour of anything and everything we wanted to see. There were no lines so we could get "up close and personal" with the trains and get their histories too. The only downside is no trains run during the week unless you have a private group.I would highly recommend this to anyone in the area.

This museum is a wonderful place to take the kids, I took my son here and I was concerned that it may get too hot but ended up being a very nice day plenty of areas to sit in the shade. We rode the LA street car about 4 times and the diesel locomotive once. I did see in the gift shop that they had snacks and drinks for purchase but we didn't eat anything here.They offer a designated area to have a kids birthday party seemed nice. The staff are mostly volunteers from what I heard and they are extremely friendly and nice. I enjoyed my conversation with the street car conductor.We paid $12 per adult for train ticket that is good for all day rides and since my son is 2 he was free.

OERM is an Excellent train museum. It is well run by a very friendly staff. I came here on Easter Sunday, which was the perfect day to go. No crowds, they were running their steam locomotive, and I was able to get lot's of excellent photos, and video, with no people in the way. But any other day would be a great day to come here. Lots and lots of things to see. Yes, some are run down, but at least they are saving them, and being scrapped. Yes, bring a hat and sunblock, as it does get hot out there in Perris. Well worth the drive to come here.

We went here on a Tuesday, so admission was free. A docent, Dick, took us on a tour of everything that he had keys to, and explained it all. Most of the electric trains and trolleys were from LA from a bygone era. There was A LOT to see. The museum owns 93 acres! The weather was great, but 80% of our time was outside, so plan accordingly. The gift shop had a great deal of merchandise for sale including beverages. There is a picnic area, so you could pack a lunch and eat under the trees.The trains only run on the week-end and you pay for admission, but ADMISSION IS FREE during the week. Driving into the parking lot did not impress me (we were the second car there) but I'm very glad we stayed and checked it out. I would like to visit when the trains are running.