Photo by TriStateGuy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
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About Whippany Railway Museum
At the restored 1904 Delaware‑Lackawanna freight house in Whippany, New Jersey, the Whippanong Valley Railroad offers steam‑powered excursions led by locomotive #4039, plus seasonal Christmas, Easter and Pumpkin trains. Open Sundays from April through October, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., the museum presents historic passenger cars and a Jersey Coast Club car while volunteers showcase New Jersey rail heritage amid the town’s historic depot setting.
📍 WHIPPANY, NJ 07965
History
The Whippany Railway Museum traces its roots to the station depot that opened on January 7, 1905, and to the 1965 establishment of the Morris County Central Railroad steam‑excursion line at the same site. After the freight house was relocated across the tracks in 1967, the Morris County Central Railroad Museum operated there until financial pressures forced the railroad to move to Newfoundland, New Jersey, in 1973 and the museum to relocate to a restored refrigerator car in 1974 as the Pequannock Valley Transportation Museum. Following a series of vandalism incidents and the final Morris County Central run on December 14, 1980, members of the Pequannock Valley Transportation Museum began restoring the deteriorated freight house in 1983, moved the last of their equipment to Whippany in January 1984, reorganized as the Whippany Railway Museum, and opened the restored facility on October 26, 1985. The museum received a formal proclamation from the New Jersey State Assembly in early 2011 recognizing its preservation work, and in 2016 the loss of the Morristown and Erie “Polar Express” Christmas excursion sharply reduced its seasonal operations.
The Trains
The museum’s excursion trains are pulled by Steam locomotive #4039 and run under the auspices of the Morristown and Erie Railway. Its passenger roster includes the 1927 Jersey Coast Club car, originally built for the Central Railroad of New Jersey, together with a 1970 NJ Transit Comet 1 car built by Pullman Standard. All equipment operates on the standard‑gauge track that runs from the restored 1904 D‑L&W freight house in Whippany to the line’s terminus used for the museum’s seasonal Easter, Pumpkin‑liner and Christmas runs.
Nearby
The Whippany Railway Museum in New Jersey links with the Liberty Historic Railway, 10 mi off, and the Maywood Station Museum, 19 mi on.
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