South Carolina Railroad Museum, Inc

The South Carolina Railroad Museum was established in 1973 by railroad enthusiasts from Columbia and Charleston with a mission of preserving and interpreting railroading in the state, and it has since been designated South Carolina's official railroad museum. Its home railroad is the former Rockton and Rion Railway, a Class III short line in Fairfield County that hauled outbound sand and gravel from Anderson Quarry to a Southern Railway connection at Rockton until operations ceased on August 21, 1981. After abandonment was approved, the railroad's owner, Martin Marietta Materials, donated the entire twelve-mile right-of-way to the museum in October 1983. The museum set about rebuilding the route under a new name, the Rockton, Rion and Western Railroad, and today it owns the full right-of-way and runs trains over roughly five miles of the line at Winnsboro.