Every Saturday from March through December, diesel excursion trains depart from the museum at 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM, pulling passengers over a stretch of the former Alabama Mineral Railroad. The standard gauge trains are hauled by first-generation diesel-electric locomotives, and the ride offers a range of seating: enclosed passenger cars, open-air coaches, or -- for those who want to feel the vibration through the floorboards -- the cab of the locomotive itself. A caboose brings up the rear for anyone who wants to watch the track unspool behind them. Special runs on Halloween and Christmas add seasonal atmosphere, sometimes with a third departure at 3:00 PM and weekend extensions.

The museum maintains three working diesel-electric locomotives for pulling excursion trains and switching duties in the shop yard, with six more displayed as static exhibits alongside two electric shop locomotives. The builder names read like a roll call of American industrial power: GM Electro-Motive Division, Baldwin, Alco, Fairbanks-Morse, Whitcomb. Four steam locomotives stand silent among them. The 1924 Woodward Iron Baldwin 2-8-0 has been fitted with wooden stairs so visitors can climb into its cab, even though most of its original operating equipment and gauges are gone. The fireless Alabama Power locomotive is the rarest specimen -- a machine that challenges the basic assumption about what a steam engine needs to function.

The rolling stock collection spans the early-to-late twentieth century and includes passenger cars, railway post office cars, and freight equipment. Several passenger cars have been restored to working condition and now carry riders on the museum's excursion line. A restored dining car next to the visitors center hosts birthday parties. But the most unexpected items in the collection belong to the Cold War: several railcars that were once property of the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command, designed for the Peacekeeper Intercontinental Ballistic Missile program. The idea was to deploy nuclear missiles on railroad cars, constantly moving them across the country to make them harder for the Soviets to target. The program was canceled, but the cars survived, ending up in rural Alabama as artifacts of a strategy that never left the drawing board.

The museum's buildings carry their own histories. The former Wilton, Alabama depot -- now signed for Calera -- houses displays of railroad artifacts and serves as the departure station for excursion trains. Across the grounds, the former Woodlawn, Alabama depot has been repurposed as the Boone Library, filled with railroad books, slides, photographs, and research materials. Both structures are approximately a century old, transplanted from their original communities to continue serving a purpose connected to the rails. A smaller-gauge railroad, the Shelby and Southern, runs former Birmingham Zoo park train equipment on its own track. Its Crown Metal Products 4-4-0 steam engine was sent to the Tweetsie Railroad for refurbishment before the line opened in 2002 during a 'Day Out with Thomas' event.