Photo by w_lemay, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Upcoming Events
No ticketed events are currently listed for Greenfield Village Railroad Junction. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.
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About Greenfield Village Railroad Junction
Board a steam-pulled train at the 1858 Smiths Creek Depot and circle Greenfield Village on the two-mile Weiser Railroad, hopping off at any of four stations. Watch locomotives serviced in a working roundhouse and turned on a hand-operated 1901 turntable, then explore the rest of America's largest indoor-outdoor museum complex by Model T or horse-drawn omnibus.
History
Railroad Junction sits inside Greenfield Village, the outdoor living history museum that Henry Ford dedicated — together with the adjacent Henry Ford Museum, as the Edison Institute — on October 21, 1929, with President Herbert Hoover honoring Thomas Edison on the 50th anniversary of the incandescent light bulb. Initially a private educational site, the complex opened to the general public on June 22, 1933, and was the nation's first outdoor museum of its kind. A rail line has been present since that 1929 dedication, beginning as a short, straight run of track on the property's northern edge; between 1971 and 1972 it was expanded into a continuous loop around the village perimeter and is now named the Weiser Railroad. The Railroad Junction station incorporates the relocated Smiths Creek Depot, a building originally constructed for the Grand Trunk Railway in 1858. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1981 as the Edison Institute.
The Trains
Steam locomotives pull passenger trains around the Weiser Railroad, a standard-gauge loop two miles long with four stations circling the village perimeter. Servicing happens at a modern working replica of an 1884 Detroit, Toledo & Milwaukee roundhouse from Marshall, Michigan — at its 2000 opening it was among only seven working roundhouses open to the public in the United States — alongside a hand-operated Pere Marquette Railway turntable built in 1901 in Petoskey, Michigan. Unusually for a railroad built purposely for tourism, the line connects directly to the national railroad network via the MDOT-owned Michigan Line used by Amtrak's Wolverine service. Other historic transportation in the village includes authentic Ford Model Ts, a 1931 Ford Model AA bus, and horse-drawn omnibuses.
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