Photo by Chris Pruitt, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum
Upcoming Events
No ticketed events are currently listed for Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.
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About Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum
The museum operates a 5.5‑mile standard‑gauge heritage line on former Alabama Mineral Railroad track, pulling diesel‑powered excursion trains each Saturday from March through December, with occasional third departures for special events. A 0.25‑mile narrow‑gauge loop runs a live‑steam Crown Metal Products 4‑4‑0, the former Birmingham Zoo train. Both routes depart from the restored Wilton depot in Calera, Alabama, and pass the historic Woodlawn depot and a developing signal garden.
📍 CALERA, AL 35040
History
The Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum traces its origins to the Heart of Dixie Railroad Club, which was incorporated in 1963. The club’s first home was a downtown Birmingham site at 18th Street South and 1st Avenue South, but after a series of vandalism incidents the organization relocated to Calera in the early 1980s, acquiring roughly eleven miles of former Louisville and Nashville Mineral Loop right‑of‑way that had been built in 1891. During the 1980s the museum rebuilt track along this corridor, extending service to Springs Junction east of Shelby County Highway 86. In 2002 the museum opened the 2 ft narrow‑gauge Shelby & Southern line, a former Birmingham Zoo park train, as part of its “Day Out with Thomas” program, which continued until 2019.
The Trains
The museum’s operating fleet includes three first‑generation diesel‑electric locomotives that pull the standard‑gauge excursions along a 5.5‑mile (8.9 km) section of the former Alabama Mineral Railroad, a 4 ft 8½ in (1,435 mm) line that presently terminates at Springs Junction just east of Shelby County Highway 86, and a 2‑ft (610 mm) narrow‑gauge live‑steam Crown Metal Products 4‑4‑0 that runs on a 0.25‑mile (0.4 km) loop formerly used by the Birmingham Zoo. Rolling stock displayed and used on the excursions exceeds forty pieces, among them the Frisco Coach No. 1062 (the museum’s oldest operational passenger car), a 1924 Woodward Iron Baldwin 2‑8‑0 cab that visitors can enter, and a 1953 fireless steam‑powered switching locomotive built for Alabama Power Company; additional static exhibits comprise six diesel‑electric locomotives, two electric shop locomotives, and four steam locomotives on display.
Nearby
Calera sits in southern Shelby County, Alabama, where Interstate 65 passes the east side of town and U.S. Route 31 forms the main street; Birmingham is 34 miles north and Montgomery 59 miles south, putting the city within the Birmingham metropolitan area. Incorporated in 1887 and named for the Spanish word for quarry — a nod to the limestone deposits all around — Calera is now home to about 16,500 people, the Shelby County Airport, George Roy and Oliver parks, and the Timberline Golf Course.
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