Bluegrass Railroad Museum Home Page

The Bluegrass Railroad and Museum grew out of a model railroading hobby: members of the Bluegrass Railroad Club founded the museum in 1976 and began acquiring full-size equipment from local railroads, first storing it in the old Louisville & Nashville yard in Lexington — ground that is now part of the Rupp Arena parking lot — then on a siding at Eastern State Hospital and later at the Bluegrass Army Depot grounds in Avon. In 1987–88 the museum acquired five and a half miles of railroad from Versailles to the Kentucky River plus nine and a half acres in Woodford County Park, moving to its present location outside Versailles in 1988. The line itself was built by the Louisville Southern Railroad in the 1880s, was leased for a time by the Monon, and later passed to the Southern Railway and then Norfolk Southern, which sold the segment slated for abandonment to the museum. After a fire in 2006, a partially burned house was remodeled into the station and museum building that serves visitors today.