Colorado Railroad Museum - The Colorado Railroad Museum was established in 1958 by Robert W. Richardson and Cornelius W. Hauck. The initial Museum collection consisted of a vast store of railway material gathered by Bob Richardson when he lived in Alamosa, Colorado in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During that time, the Rio Grande Southern narrow gauge was abandoned, as was most of the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge trackage. Railroad companies began a systematic purge of their operations paperwork, files, narrow gauge equipment, locomotives, and rail cars. Concerned about the impact the loss of this equipment would have on Colorado history, Richardson spent many hours recovering material that the rail companies had discarded. He salvaged tons of railway company records, rolling stock, and other pieces of equipment. As Richardson's collection grew, it was determined that it should be properly housed in a permanent museum, and so in 1958, the Museum's present site in Golden, Colorado was chosen. <br /><br />Initially, Richardson constructed the Iron Horse Motel at the Golden site, as his intention was to create a tourist railroad destination. In 1959, along with the motel, he constructed a small depot building which served as a museum gallery space, library, and a general store. As it turned out, the motel was not particularly successful, so it was closed by the 1970s. The depot has remained on site throughout the years, and two additional structures were constructed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. <br /><br />In 1997, the Robert W. Richardson Library was completed, and all library materials were moved out of the depot and into the new library facility. Then, in 2000 the Cornelius W. Hauck Roundhouse was completed. It contains five stalls and the necessary equipment for the repair and restoration of our Rolling Stock collections.<br /><br />Since its inception, the Colorado Railroad Museum has continued to accumulate railroad artifacts, archives, and rolling stock both through Bob Richardson's personal collecting activities, and through a constant flow of donations. To date in 2017, the catalogued collection contains approximately 100 rail cars and locomotives, 4,335 three-dimensional artifacts, 15,721 photographs and negatives, 3,133 archival objects and collections, and 8,791 books, and several thousand linear feet of textual and archival materials.