Qualla: Virginia Museum of Transportation

Virginia Museum of Transportation: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O484~enwiki, CC BY-SA 4.0. On May 9, 2015, after years of restoration, the Norfolk and Western Class J Number 611 fired its boiler and rolled under its own steam for the first time since 1994. The streamlined dark red giant - one of fourteen J-class locomotives ever built, the only one to survive, hand-assembled at the Roanoke Shops in 1950 - was back. Crowds lined the tracks. People who had ridden behind 611 as children stood with their grandchildren. The locomotive lives now at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in downtown Roanoke, in the old Norfolk and Western Freight Station where the city's railroad history was first made. When 611 fires up, even people who do not normally care about trains find themselves caring.

Image: O484~enwiki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Virginia Museum of Transportation: A Rocket and a Flood

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The museum began modestly. In 1963, the Roanoke Transportation Museum opened in Wasena Park, in an old Norfolk and Western freight depot on the banks of the Roanoke River. The first major pieces were eclectic: a United States Army Jupiter missile, donated by the military, and the...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Virginia Museum of Transportation: Fifty Pieces of Rolling Iron

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O484~enwiki, CC BY-SA 4.0. The collection now includes more than fifty pieces of rolling stock. The steam roster is extraordinary. The J-class 611, restored to operation. The Class A 1218, built at the Roanoke Shops in 1943 and the last surviving 2-6-6-4 articulated locomotive in the world, which ran excur...

Image: O484~enwiki | CC BY-SA 4.0

Virginia Museum of Transportation: The People the Tracks Carried

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donnie Nunley, CC BY 3.0. The museum is not only an exhibit of machines. Ongoing displays tell the human stories that ran on the rails. The Claytor Brothers exhibit traces how two Virginians, Graham and Robert Claytor, helped engineer the 1982 merger of Norfolk and Western with Southern to form Norfolk So...

Image: Donnie Nunley | CC BY 3.0

Virginia Museum of Transportation: Wings, Wheels, and Lake Pearl

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit VGN322, CC BY-SA 4.0. Beyond steam, the museum carries a complete cross-section of how Americans moved. An automobile gallery displays a 1913 Metz, a 1920 Buick touring car, and an armored car once used to transport the United States Bill of Rights in 1991. The Wings Over Virginia aviation gallery, re...

Image: VGN322 | CC BY-SA 4.0