Program areas at Northwest Railway Museum
Interpretive Railway - the Museum offers experiential living history programs that allow visitors to travel by train on a 19th century Railway between two communities in western Washington. These programs interpret the impact Railway had on the region and allow visitors to experience the excitement of a working Railway in an era before interstate highways. Interpretive Railway programs including school train, regular weekend trains, steam trains, and themed events for young children reached a combined total of more than 61,000 visitors.
Train shed exhibit hall - the semi-conditioned space incorporates more than 24,000 sq. Ft. and offers a stable environment for the Museum's most vulnerable and representative artifacts including chapel car 5 messenger of peace, white river lumber caboose 001, northern pacific Railway steam locomotive 924, weyerhaeuser timber locomotive 1, and great northern caboose x-101. The train shed was open all year with seasonally-adjusted hours.
Collection care - the conservation and restoration workshop is a facility used to perform collection care on large artifacts including locomotives, coaches, and freight cars. It incorporates 8,200 sq. Ft., features two tracks, and a diversity of specialty tools including planers, lathes, milling machines, saws, tenoners, drills, and jacks. The principle projects in 2023 were rehabilitation of an 83 year old alco diesel electric locomotive and restoration of a 1901 pullman-built parlor car.
Other program services offered by the Northwest Railway Museum include operation of the snoqualmie depot, an 1890-built train station listed on the national register of historic places an interpretive signage program along the centennial trail in historic downtown snoqualmie railroad history outreach into k-12 public school classrooms operation of an annual rail themed town festival called snoqualmie days and operation of web sites including trainmuseum.org, messengerofpeace.org, wellingtonremembered.org, and snoqualmiedays.com. The Museum also offered railroad history books, reproductions, and other Northwest rail-history related materials through its depot bookstore.