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No ticketed events are currently listed for Union Depot Railroad Museum. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.
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About Union Depot Railroad Museum
Housed in Mendota's 1888 Union Depot, the Union Depot Railroad Museum shares its building with the town's working Amtrak station, where trains still stop daily. Visitors browse several rooms of vintage railroad artifacts, then see passenger cars from the 1930s and 1940s and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy No. 4978, a 2-8-2 steam locomotive built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in September 1923 — fitting for a town named after a junction of two trails.
History
Mendota owes its existence — and its name, drawn from a Lakota word meaning "junction of two trails" — to a railroad crossing: the Illinois Central, completed in the summer of 1853, intersected the existing Chicago and Aurora Railroad here, with the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy completing the crossing at the present townsite. The town's first depot, the Passenger House, burned down in 1885, and its replacement, a new Union station, opened on February 23, 1888, originally fitted out with a hotel, restaurants, and waiting rooms kept separate for passengers and railroad staff. That building still anchors Mendota's rail life: the Union Depot Railroad Museum shares it with the active Amtrak stop and fills several rooms with vintage railroad artifacts. The collection also includes passenger train cars from the 1930s and 1940s, plus Chicago, Burlington & Quincy No. 4978, a 2-8-2 locomotive turned out by Baldwin Locomotive Works in September 1923.
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