Museum's Theater Building Undergoing Major Renovations

The Museum's Theater Building is undergoing its first major renovation in decades. The building dates back to the early 20th century when the Railway Express Agency used the building for a freight house, luggage storage and baggage handling for railroad passengers.

The Museum's Curator and a team of 3 interns from Texas A&M Galveston's Museum Science Programs are diligently working on the building. They are in the process of carefully cataloging, wrapping and packing away the model train and railroad china displays before renovations begin.

(Shown left to right: Austin Hernandez, Libbie Barnes, Sam Christensen, and Sarah DeArmond)

The Bay Area Railroading Fellowship has also been busy donating time and efforts to dismantling the model layouts.

(Ray Byer inspecting the model train layout)

The Theater Building is named for the theater that showed an orientation video for museum guests in the early days of the Galveston Railroad Museum. The building was repurposed to house the Railroad Museum's prolific railroad china collection in 2006. Following Hurricane Ike, the museum's china collection and model train collection were reinstalled when the museum reopened.

After the renovation, the Theater Building will be able to house traveling exhibitions in a temporary gallery space and accommodate STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math) learning opportunities at the museum. The building is set to reopen in its' new capacity in January of 2020.