Gopher State Railway Museum

🚂 ALL ABOARD THE 4TH OF JULY TRAIN! 🚂

Celebrate Independence Day with a ride on the historic trains at the Gopher State Railway Museum!

Join us on Saturday, July 4, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM for a day of family fun, railroad history, and patriotic celebration.

🎟 Admission:
• Adults: $10
• Children under 16: $5
• Children under 2: FREE

🌭 Every paid admission includes:
• 1 Hot Dog
• 1 Ice Cream Sandwich
• 1 Bottled Water

🚂 Historic Train Rides
🍔 Food & Refreshments
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Fun for the Whole Family

📍 Gopher State Railway Museum
25501 Helena Blvd, New Prague, MN

Be sure to visit our Facebook Event page and click "Going" to let us know you'll be joining us! Inviting your friends and sharing the event helps us spread the word and make this year's celebration even bigger.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1K1n7GJqy7/

It’s a beautiful June Saturday and the train is running until 4p.

Come on out and see us!!!

We are 15 days away from our first event of the year at the Gopher State Railway Museum!!

Don’t miss out on this awesome opportunity!!!

🌸Pre-Mother’s Day Train Ride & Family Event at the Gopher State Railway Museum!🚂

📅 Date: May 2
📍 Location: Gopher State Railway Museum, 25501 Helena Blvd, New Prague, MN 56071

Celebrate Mom early with a unique and memorable family experience! Ride the historic train and enjoy a special pre-Mother’s Day event filled with fun activities for all ages.

This special event also celebrates Caboose Day, featuring the historic Minneapolis & St. Louis Caboose 1201—a must-see for train lovers of all ages!

💐 Special Activity:
Decorate a flower pot and pick out a beautiful flower for Mom at the greenhouse train stop—creating a heartfelt keepsake she’ll love!

🎟️ Tickets (sold on site):
• Adults: $10
• Children: $5
• Ages 2 & under: FREE

🎉 More Fun Includes:
• Food available for purchase
• Real fire trucks up close 🚒
• Train museum tours
• Photo opportunities
• And much more!

Bring the whole family and make lasting memories together. We can’t wait to celebrate with you!

👉Invite your friends and family!

We can’t wait to see you there!

It’s not too profound to say, things usually tend to go great until they don’t.

That was the case Sunday at Gopher State Railway Museum.

We spent the afternoon respotting the trucks for car Manitoba over to the track where we plan to build its frame and mate the body with its wheels and frame.

Things went well transferring the trucks. It was looking optimistic setting the first cast frame member in place would go just as easily, but fate and reality said, “hold our beverages and watch what we can do to you!”

As we eased the frame down on the trucks, being careful to line everything up just right, it came to rest short of its destination. Now what?

In 2026, you just don’t go to the parts store to get parts for an 1880 Pullman car. Grainger and McMaster Carr don’t have catalogs covering them. You scrounge the countryside and network with other museums to find salvaged parts from other dismantled equipment. You make concessions to history and fabricate missing pieces when necessary.

It looks like that’s what we may have to do here.

The trucks were salvaged from a 1915 Pullman car which was being scrapped. They’re newer than what was under car Manitoba, but similar dimensions. The frame castings are aftermarket parts from the 1920s, similar to what was installed under car Manitoba in the 1920s - however - slightly different and salvaged from another dismantled car.

Initial review of all the parts indicated they’d work together. A test fit today showed how wrong we were.

The design of the trucks is such the frame doesn’t even touch the center bolster. The distance between the coupler face and center bolster also comes up a little short, putting the end of the trucks within the stair well.

We can build a plate to raise the truck bolster to meet the frame, but the coupler face to centerline distance may be a bigger issue.

A setback, but not an insurmountable one, just needs some more thought and engineering before moving forward. This is why dry fitting things is important. Would have hated to fabricate the frame, only to find out it couldn’t be used as is and needing major modification.

The cast steel frames were designed to be used with a different style of truck, but in 2026, you need to work with what you can find. We’ll make it all work, our timeline for construction just got lengthened is all.