The family-owned Buckingham Branch Railroad grew from 17 miles of track in 1989 to about 275 miles across Virginia, and it partners with a rail preservation chapter on vintage excursions from Dillwyn.

The Marion Union Station Association keeps Marion's 1902 union station alive as a railroad museum, event venue and one of central Ohio's favorite places to watch trains.

Across from the Ferry Building in San Francisco, the free San Francisco Railway Museum tells the story of the city's vintage streetcars and cable cars, then sends you out the door to ride them.

An outdoor railroad museum at 14th Street West and Memorial Boulevard in Huntington, West Virginia, run by the Collis P. Huntington Railroad Historical Society and focused on the C&O.

In Amboy, Illinois, a restored 1876 Illinois Central division headquarters holds 19 rooms of railroad and town history, with a steam switcher, caboose, freight house and one-room school outside.

The Louisiana Railroad Heritage Trust works to save historic railroad equipment and keep it in use through leasing. Here is what the group does and where families can see Louisiana's preserved trains in person.

On the very claims that started Tonopah's silver rush, this 100-acre park lets families walk restored mine buildings, peer down a 500-foot stope and learn how ore once left town by wagon and rail.

Selma's 1924 Union Station, restored in 2002, is both Johnston County's Amtrak stop and a small museum of rail and town history, with free parking and a good spot to watch trains just off I-95.

In the Santa Cruz Mountains near Felton, Roaring Camp runs 75-minute steam train trips through the redwoods behind geared logging engines dating from 1890, starting from a recreated 1880s logging town.

On Chicago's South Side, Pullman National Historical Park preserves the planned industrial town built around the Pullman Company, scene of the 1894 strike and Chicago's first national park unit.

Santa Fe's Railyard district carries the city's railroad story from 1880 to today, with a public park, gardens, a children's play area and free events on the old rail grounds.

The United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey cares for more than 60 historic locomotives and railroad cars at Boonton Yard and opens the collection to families on special event days.

In the birthplace of the Rio Grande Southern, the volunteer-run Ridgway Railroad Museum keeps a free outdoor rail yard, a half-mile loop track and rides on Galloping Goose No. 4 and Motor No. 1.

Climbing Pikes Peak since 1891, the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway carries riders 9 miles from a depot in Manitou Springs to the 14,115-foot summit of America's Mountain on a 3.5-hour round trip.

The free Dacotah Prairie Museum in downtown Aberdeen tells how the railroad and pioneer settlers shaped Brown County, and it is raising funds to rebuild its railroad exhibit as Aberdeen All Aboard.

Inside Cincinnati's historic Union Terminal, the Cincinnati History Museum's Cincinnati in Motion layout recreates the 1940s city with what the museum calls the nation's largest S-scale train model.

A family guide to 5 Alaska train museums and rail sites: a Gold Rush railway out of Skagway, the oldest working steam engine in Alaska, a park train in Fairbanks and the 1917 depot in Seward.

The state history museum in Topeka builds its Connecting Kansas gallery around an 1880 Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe steam locomotive, with a child-sized train for small visitors in the lobby.

Next to the old HC&S sugar mill site in Puunene, the Sugar Museum tells 168 years of Maui's King Sugar story, from irrigation tunnels to plantation camps, with a working mill model and outdoor machinery.

In Fairbanks' 44-acre Pioneer Park, a summer train circles the grounds past a historic village, while the Tanana Valley Railroad Museum and President Harding's 1923 railroad car wait a short walk away.