Photo by Bedford at en.wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
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About Historic Railpark & Train Museum
Step inside Bowling Green's 1925 limestone Louisville & Nashville depot, where docents lead behind-the-scenes guided tours through rare railcars — a Railway Post Office car, the "Duncan Hines" dining car, a "Towering Pine" Pullman sleeper, a 1911 office car, and a 1942 Army hospital car. A two-story museum fills the former waiting room, a permanent model railroad exhibit runs inside, and December opens with the two-day Festival of Trains.
📍 BOWLING GREEN, KY 42101
History
The museum occupies Bowling Green's third Louisville & Nashville depot. The first was built in 1858, before the rails from Nashville arrived on August 10, 1859; Confederate troops retreating in February 1862 burned it along with downtown, and Union occupiers replaced it with a wooden building. L&N president Milton H. Smith long refused the city a new station after citizens chartered a competing railroad, and only after his death in 1921 did the present limestone depot — built of stone from the former White Stone Quarry in southern Warren County — open with much fanfare on October 2, 1925. During the 1930s and 1940s more than 30 passenger trains a day stopped here, among them the Pan-American, Humming Bird, and Azalean, before postwar decline; the last passenger train left on October 6, 1979, and the building joined the National Register of Historic Places that December 18. Saved from the wrecking ball by concerned citizens who transferred it to local government in 1997, the depot underwent a twelve-year, five-phase renovation, and in 2007 the Friends of L&N Depot opened the museum and retail operations now known as the Historic RailPark & Train Museum.
Nearby
Bowling Green, Kentucky's third-most-populous city, is the seat of Warren County in the Upland South, founded by pioneers in 1798 and briefly the provisional Confederate capital of Kentucky during the Civil War. Today it is a college town anchored by Western Kentucky University and famous as the home of the Corvette — every Chevrolet Corvette since 1981 has been built here, celebrated at the National Corvette Museum. Other stops include the Kentucky Museum and Riverview at Hobson Grove, a historic Italianate house museum.
Where to Stay
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Most heritage railroads sit well off the interstate. Picking up a rental at the nearest airport is usually the easiest way in.
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