Established 1977 Province British Columbia | Website www.trainsdeluxe.com Phone +1 250-489-3918 | |
Location Cranbrook, British Columbia Canada Address 57 Van Horne Street South, Box 400, Cranbrook, BC V1C 1Y7, Canada Hours Closing soon · 10AM–5PMTuesday10AM–5PMWednesday10AM–5PMThursday10AM–5PMFriday10AM–5PMSaturday10AM–5PMSundayClosedMondayClosed Similar Rocky Mountains, Canadian Rockies, Jimsmith Lake Provincial, Kamloops Heritage Railway, Revelstoke Railway Museum | ||
Canadian museum of rail travel
The Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, or its brand name "Trains Deluxe", is located in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, a city of about 25,000 on the west side of the Rocky Mountains. The city was developed by the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 1898, as the administrative centre for the railway's "Crowsnest Pass" route. It is still a busy railway centre with Canadian and international freight traffic. Cranbrook was incorporated as a city in 1905 when Cranbrook boomed into the major economic, and commercial centre of the Kootenays.
Contents
Canadian museum of rail travel orientation video
History
The museum, opened in 1977, restores and displays vintage passenger trains - the transcontinental "Deluxe Hotels-On-Wheels". It emphasizes deluxe railway passenger cars design in various eras (1886, 1907, 1929, 1936) as well as deluxe railway hotel architecture.
Collections
The collections include:
Instead of the usual mechanical and technological focus that most railway museums employ, the museum emphasizes the social aspects of the railway through travel and design.
It located downtown next to the busy rail yards of the CPR, on Highway 3/95, a major east-west Canadian arterial highway, and a major north-south route linking Banff and Japser National Parks with the Pacific North-West of the USA. Cranbrook is about 50 miles (80 km) north of the Idaho and Montana border with Canada and British Columbia.
The back of the Museum has a siding track for excursion trains arrival, with doors into the Museum's large entrance hall from this track. The spectacular "Royal Canadian Pacific" (a high-end excursion train operated by the CPR on a circle route through the Rockies, out of Calgary, Alberta), uses this facility, as well as occasional special excursions of the CPR's famed #2816 restored "Hudson" style steam locomotive.
A 1992 study about the historical significance of the collections was recently updated by the author, Rober Turner, Curator Emeritus of the Royal British Columbia Museum, in which he states that "the museum is unparalleled anywhere in Canada, and is clearly of national as well as international importance".