Western Crossroads Railway Museum

03/18/2026

It is gratifying to see the materials that we have digitized be put to good use. Hyacinth Models just announced exclusive HO scale models of Carbon County Railway hoppers manufactured by Bowser, including the United States Bicentennial car. Photos from our collections were used in the development of the artwork for these models!

https://hyacinthmodels.com/collections/carbon-county-railway

Please note that the Western Crossroads Railway Museum does not benefit from the the sale of these models, but we are happy to have assisted in making them a reality!

Hyacinth Models

02/28/2026

We have now surpassed 2,000 digitized photographs in our collection, which amounts for less than a quarter of our total physical photographs! Today we uploaded 95 more photographs from the Paul Turcic collection to Flickr, thanks to the assistance of Museum member Brady Wenzebauer who processed the scans.

This photograph, part of this large batch, shows Union Pacific and Utah Railway (leased from other sources) locomotives at the yard in Provo, Utah.

Western Crossroads Railway Museum photographs can be viewed here: 193288719@N07/" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/193288719@N07/

02/18/2026

We recently scanned several folders from Utah Railway's equipment records, most of which cover their steam locomotives. This is the order sheet for Utah Railway number 4, which was identical to locomotives built for the Buffalo & Susquehanna, so the ALCO builder's photo of B&S 170 was used to illustrate the locomotive class.

By coincidence, it turns out that B&S 170 wound up in Utah later in its life as Tooele Valley 12, sister locomotive to Tooele Valley 11 that today survives on display at the Tooele Mining and Railroad Museum!

The full equipment record folders can be viewed here:
https://archive.org/details/

02/05/2026

12/17/2025

We are pleased to announce the donation of the Phillip Ray Averett collection, the latest addition to the Western Crossroads Railway Museum archive. This collection includes two issues of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad's Green Light magazine, five issues of Association of American Railroad comic books, and a stack of Rio Grande Western Railway contracts dating between 1893 and 1904, including the files for the Rio Grande Western eating houses located in Green River, Helper, Thistle, and Salt Lake City!

Phillip Ray was a second generation railroader and history lover who collected documents from Utah railroads. He hired on with Union Pacific in 1962 as a carman, moved to the Rio Grande in 1971 and was promoted to car foreman, retiring in 2003.

This collection was donated by his son, Phillip Bradley Averett, the third generation in the family to work in railroading. He was hired by the Rio Grande in 1994 and retired with thirty years of service just last year (a hearty congratulations on retirement!)

We appreciate Mr. Averett for making these valuable documents available to us. They are in the process of digitization and will be uploaded for public access on our Internet Archive account:
https://archive.org/details/

12/06/2025

We are happy to provide a pop-up exhibit from our collections at the Peteetneet Museum in Payson, Utah for the fourth year in a row. The exhibit can be seen Monday and Friday evenings and Saturday mornings until December 22nd.

12/01/2025

Denver & Rio Grande Western caboose 01433 was captured at Helper, Utah, by Paul Turcic. From the Western Crossroads Railway Museum collection.

193288719@N07" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/193288719@N07

11/17/2025

Amtrak's classic Phase III "Pepsi Can" scheme makes an appearance at the Denver & Rio Grande Western's Salt Lake City depot. Introduced in 1976, it was used until the Phase IV scheme was introduced in 1993 on passenger cars and 1997 on locomotives. The General Electric P32-8BWH locomotives were built in 1991, dating this photograph between that year and approximately 2000 as it took some time for the entire Amtrak fleet to be repainted into Phase IV.

Photograph by Robert Paul Turcic, from the Western Crossroads Railway Museum.

11/03/2025

We have a new batch of photos digitized and online on our Flickr page, including some of the weird and funky maintenance equipment once used by the Utah Railway, captured by Paul Turcic.
193288719@N07/albums/72177720327201948/" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://www.flickr.com/photos/193288719@N07/albums/72177720327201948/

10/18/2025

We have some new documents on our Internet Archive profile, including John E. Timberlake's file on his 1973 presentation on unit coal train operations at the Railway Systems and Management Association Conference of that year. Timberlake was Director of Unit Train Operations for the Denver & Rio Grande Western.
https://archive.org/details/

09/28/2025

Geneva Steel Baldwin locomotive number 33 at Vineyard, Utah, in May 1990. Paul Turcic photograph, Western Crossroads Railway Museum collection.