The aptly chosen home for the Virginia Museum of Transportation is a restored railway freight station that sits beside the tracks of the Norfolk Southern mainline in downtown Roanoke. While most of the rolling stock evoking railroad’s golden age is exhibited outdoors, the complete story of transportation is told inside the station.  Exhibited in the galleries are carriages,  early autos, freight trucks, fire engines and airplanes.

Much of the action is along Antique Auto Alley, where the oldest vehicle is the 1880 “Doctor’s Buggy,” an extended roof rockaway.  The rockaway was an adaption of a traditional coach first done in Long Island, New York around 1830.  Luxury options were available even on the earliest vehicles; this model has windows that open and close all the way around the passenger compartment, as well as window shades for privacy.  Another vintage model is the 1885 stick seat square box buggy, meant for speed.  It’s interesting to learn that when selecting horses for a two- horse team, the important consideration was conformation not color.  The horses needed to be roughly the same age and size so that they pulled the carriage in tandem.

The oldest car in the collection is a 1920 Buick touring car.  David Dunbar Buick founded his motor company in Detroit in 1902 and in the first year 37 vehicles were sold at $850 each.  By 1910, Buick sold 11,000 cars at $1,050 each.  The term touring car was derived from the most common use of cars to get to church and then take a Sunday drive.  Henry Ford manufactured his first car in 1903. The earliest Ford in the collection is the 1924 Model T Chassis Ford; this was the year the company sold its 10 millionth car.   The museum also has a replica of a 1903 Oldsmobile, the first car in the Roanoke Valley.  A wide assortment of trucks, buses and fire equipment is included in the outdoor exhibits. 

A large  section of the museum is devoted to the railroad.  Exhibits provide nuggets of information like the fact that coal is the commodity most transported by rail across the country. Coal also makes up 80% of all goods that are delivered in Virginia.  The locomotive and rolling stock are exhibited outdoors.  A unique piece is one of the few surviving N&W Dynamometers.  Made in 1919 this car could calibrate data connected with locomotive operation and train haul conditions such as drawbar pull, brake pipe pressure and other precise measurements. A system of up to 20 connections provided a precise analysis of locomotive performance.  There are 18 locomotives, five switcher cars, and an assortment of diverse equipment like an oil car, derrick car, caboose, boxcar and a passenger observation car.  Visitors can climb aboard eight pieces of equipment.

Back inside there’s one more discovery to make and it’s a doozy---though it doesn’t have much to do with transportation.  The museum has an incredibly detailed three-ring circus model complete with crowds, performers and wild animals. The link is the railroad, without which the circus would not have been able to travel swiftly from town to town, garnering the reputation as “the greatest show on earth.”  Between 1872 and 1947, during the heyday of the circus, specially designed railroad cars moved the big top.  In 1872 it took 62 cars to move P.T. Barnum’s Circus.  The circus train peaked in 1947 when Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey used 109 cars to move their extravaganza.  This colorful museum exhibit delights young and old with its amazing detail.  

Directions: From I-81 take I-581 into Roanoke.  At Exit 6, take Wells Avenue, make a left on First Street and a right on Shenandoah Avenue.  Take a left onto Fifth Street, then another left onto Norfolk Avenue.  The museum is at 303 Norfolk Avenue.