The Colfax Railroad Museum is a railroad museum

Railway museum

A railway museum is a museum that explores the history of all aspects of rail related transportation, including: locomotives , railway cars, trams, and railway signalling equipment.See List of railway museums...

 in Colfax

Colfax, Wisconsin

Colfax is a village in Dunn County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,136 at the 2000 census. The village is located within the Town of Colfax.-Geography:Colfax is located at ....

, Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

.

Collection

The museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 currently has a growing collection of railroad equipment from railroads that serviced the western Wisconsin

Wisconsin

Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...

 and eastern Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 region. The collection includes Soo Line

Soo Line Railroad

The Soo Line Railroad is the primary United States railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway , controlled through the Soo Line Corporation, and one of seven U.S. Class I railroads. Although it is named for the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste...

 caboose

Caboose

A caboose is a manned North American rail transport vehicle coupled at the end of a freight train. Although cabooses were once used on nearly every freight train, their use has declined and they are seldom seen on trains, except on locals and smaller railroads.-Function:The caboose provided the...

 number 273, Barney and Smith Car Company heavyweight coach number 991, and Soo Line GP30

EMD GP30

The EMD GP30 was a 2,250 hp four-axle B-B diesel locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division of La Grange, Illinois between July, 1961 and November, 1963...

 number 703, and other cars.

The depot houses the large collection of railroad lantern

Lantern

A lantern is a portable lighting device or mounted light fixture used to illuminate broad areas. Lanterns may also be used for signaling, as 'torches', or as general light sources outdoors . Low light level varieties are used for decoration. The term "lantern" is also used more generically to...

s, railroad china

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...

, and the nation's largest railroad paperweight collection. The primary purpose of these artifacts is to show what items of material culture

Material culture

In the social sciences, material culture is a term that refers to the relationship between artifacts and social relations. Studying a culture's relationship to materiality is a lens through which social and cultural attitudes can be discussed...

 people encountered in their day-to-day activities with the railroads and how technology changed over time.

History

The museum is housed in the third depot

Train station

A train station, also called a railroad station or railway station and often shortened to just station,"Station" is commonly understood to mean "train station" unless otherwise qualified. This is evident from dictionary entries e.g...

 to be built in the village. Built from sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 quarried nearby, this building was constructed between 1914 and 1915 on the foundation of the second depot, which had previously been moved off the site to serve as a personal residence.

In 1958, a large storm tore through western Wisconsin, producing many tornado

Tornado

A tornado is a violent, dangerous, rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. They are often referred to as a twister or a cyclone, although the word cyclone is used in meteorology in a wider...

es, one of which hit the freighthouse on the depot's west side. The wall of the women's waiting room was rebuilt from the rubble, but the freight house was never restored.