Virginia Museum of Transportation
The Virginia Museum of Transportation is a museum devoted to the topic of transportation located in Downtown Roanoke, Virginia, US. History. The Virginia Museum of Transportation began its life in 1963 as the Roanoke Transportation Museum located in Wasena Park in Roanoke, Virginia. The museum at that time was housed in an old Norfolk & Western Railway freight depot on the banks of the Roanoke River. The earliest components of the museum's collection included a United States Army Jupiter rocket and the N&W J Class Locomotive #611, donated by Norfolk & Western Railway to the City of  Roanoke where many of its engines were constructed. The museum expanded its collection to include other pieces of rail equipment such as a former DC Transit PCC streetcar, and a number of horse-drawn vehicles including a hearse, a covered wagon, and a Studebaker wagon. In November 1985, a flood nearly destroyed the museum, and much of its collection. It forced the shutdown of the facility and the refurbishment of #611. In April 1986, the museum re-opened in the Norfolk and Western Railway Freight Station in downtown Roanoke as the Virginia Museum of Transportation. The museum has earned that  title, being recognized by the General Assembly of Virginia as the Commonwealth's official transportation museum. The Norfolk & Western steam locomotives No. 611 and No. 1218 were originally property of the city of Roanoke due to the museum's original charter. On the April 2, 2012, VMT's 50 Birthday, the city officially gave the locomotives to the museum. The Norfolk and Western Railway Freight Station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The station consists of two clearly identifiable sections, both of which were completed in 1918. They are the two-story, fifty-bay-long , freight station proper which was built parallel to the railroad tracks and now is oriented south, and the one-story-with-basement brick annex that formerly housed the offices of the Shenandoah and Radford divisions of the Norfolk and Western. The building closed for railroad freight business in 1964. Many of the museum's antique automobiles are on display here as well. The museum also features occasional special exhibits such as the "Hollywood Star Cars" exhibit which showcased famous cars from the history of television and movies. Galleries and exhibits. Railroad exhibits. On-going exhibits cover sundry aspects of railroad  life in America, especially Virginia. In addition to these on-going exhibits, the museum maintains an O-Gauge train layout modeled after Roanoke, Salem, and Lynchburg, Virginia. Collection. From January 20, 2011, to May 3, the museum was home to Chesapeake and Ohio 614 as part of the museum's "Thoroughbreds of Steam" exhibit. Other pieces include automobiles such as a 1913 Metz, a 1920 Buick touring car, a Highway Post Office Bus, and an armored car used to showcase the United States Bill of Rights in 1991. Rolling stock. Though the most prominent pieces of the museum's collection  are the two Norfolk & Western engines, there are more than fifty pieces of rolling stock in the collection. Some exhibits may be closed to the public as restoration is in progress on some pieces, while some pieces in need of heavy restoration are stored offsite in yards managed by Norfolk Southern. Aviation collection. After a storm in 2006, the aviation gallery was rebuilt into a collection of interviews and first hand collections, including: