Corinth grew up where two railroads crossed, and in 1862 that crossing made it one of the most fought-over towns in the West. The National Park Service tells the story at this Corinth visitor center.

In the town where the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe began, the Atchison Rail Museum displays vintage rail cars and steam engine 811 near the historic depot, with miniature train rides on weekends.

In downtown Minot, the Railroad Museum of Minot tells how the Great Northern and Soo Line built the city, with four cabooses, a rare wedge plow and a big model railroad run by local modelers.

In Enola, the all-volunteer Historical Society of East Pennsboro keeps the township's story, including its railroad history, in a museum on Miller Street with monthly Enola Miller House tours.

Iowa Trolley Park in Clear Lake is a small hands-on railroad museum that tells the story of the electric interurban that once linked Mason City and Clear Lake, with rides on operating days.

The 1909 Milwaukee Road depot in Avery, Idaho still serves its small community and houses a museum of memorabilia from the days when Avery was a busy railroad hub on the St. Joe River.

Housed in Roanoke's 1918 Norfolk & Western freight station, the Virginia Museum of Transportation keeps more than 50 pieces of rolling stock plus galleries of cars, aircraft and model trains.

From the 1892 Essex Station, the Valley Railroad's Essex Steam Train & Riverboat runs narrated steam train trips through Deep River and Chester, with a combined train and riverboat option.

For about 25 years the volunteer-run Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad carried passengers 17 miles from Fremont to Hooper, Nebraska, on an 1869 line in rail cars dating from the 1920s.

On the historic Santa Margarita Ranch, a narrow gauge steam railroad pulls restored 1950s coaches from Disneyland's Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad around the ranch headquarters on special event days.

From Westbrook Lane Station in Kingston, the employee-owned Catskill Mountain Railroad runs themed family trains on the historic Ulster and Delaware corridor, in open-air flat cars or coaches.

From Kingsland Station near I-95, the Georgia Coastal Railway runs open-air themed trains on the historic St. Marys Railroad out to the marshes, with a model train layout and a theater back at the station.

A free volunteer-run museum in Chester's restored 1862 Western Railroad station, a National Historic Landmark tied to the Keystone Arches and the world's first mountain railroad.

Dickinson began as Pleasant Valley Siding when Northern Pacific crews arrived in 1880. Its depot site marks the railroad division point that put the town on the map, and local archives keep its story.

Staunton's 1902 C&O train station anchors the Wharf Area Historic District downtown, and Amtrak's Cardinal still stops here on its run between New York and Chicago.

From a depot in Snoqualmie that has sent out trains since 1890 to logging steam near Mount Rainier and an all-original interurban in Yakima, here are 14 Washington train museums and rail sites for families.

On Ann Street in downtown Charleston, a small free museum managed by the city displays the 1928 replica of the Best Friend of Charleston, the locomotive that first ran on Christmas Day, 1830.

In Nevada City, California, volunteers at the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum restore wooden rail cars, show off 1875 Baldwin Engine 5 and run Saturday Railbus rides. Admission is free.

Inside Fairbanks' Pioneer Park, the Tanana Valley Railroad Museum shows off Engine No. 1, an 1899 Porter steam locomotive that volunteers spent ten years restoring. Admission is free all summer.

Eight miles west of Marquette, the free Michigan Iron Industry Museum tells the story of Michigan's three iron ranges and the people who mined them, with films, exhibits and trails by a historic forge site.