National Railroad Museum
Locomotives, passenger cars, rolling stock, and railroad labor fill a riverside campus where visitors can walk beside—and sometimes through—the machines.
Artwork inspired by Richard Lorenz
The scale of Big Boy 4017 is the immediate lesson, but the museum becomes richer when locomotives are treated as systems. Fuel, water, crew labor, signaling, maintenance shops, timetables, and passenger expectations had to align before a train moved; nearby cars reveal who traveled comfortably and who did the work out of sight.
The British A4 locomotive Dwight D. Eisenhower adds wartime and diplomatic history, while rolling stock and archival displays connect national networks to Green Bay industry. Train rides are seasonal and weather-dependent, so the strongest year-round plan is to compare one locomotive, one passenger space, and one worker story rather than building the visit around a ride alone.
- Campus
- 33 riverside acres
- Collection
- Locomotives and rolling stock
- Ride
- Seasonal museum train
Quick guide
- Stand beside the driving wheels
- Use your own height to grasp how tractive power translated into enormous rods, bearings, boilers, and maintenance needs
- Follow a named engine
- Eisenhower crossed the Atlantic and what preservation changed about its meaning
Read a locomotive as infrastructure, not sculpture
- Stand beside the driving wheels
- Use your own height to grasp how tractive power translated into enormous rods, bearings, boilers, and maintenance needs.
- Walk through social space
- Compare passenger compartments, service areas, and crew positions to see how hierarchy was built into rolling stock.
- Follow a named engine
- Trace why Dwight D. Eisenhower crossed the Atlantic and what preservation changed about its meaning.
- Check ride operations
- Short train rides depend on season, staffing, weather, and special-event schedules.
Good to know
Some historic cars require steps, narrow passages, or low clearances even though the main museum route is accessible.
Notice these
- Big Boy 4017
- A4 Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Pullman and postal cars