Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum, Railroad museum in Calera, Alabama
The Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum is a railway museum in Calera that displays vintage locomotives, passenger cars, and railroad equipment. Collections are arranged across open-air grounds and indoor exhibition spaces.
The Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum began as the Heart of Dixie Railroad Club in Birmingham, where donated cars were vulnerable to vandals. In the early 1980s the club moved to Calera and secured several hundred acres along 9th Street. Its standard-gauge excursions run on a 5.5-mile section of the former Louisville and Nashville Mineral loop, built in 1891 to carry iron-making minerals.
The former Wilton depot, now signed for Calera, holds lanterns, locomotive headlights, rail cross sections and passenger train china and silverware. The former Woodlawn depot houses the Boone Library of railroad books, photographs, maps, track diagrams and timetables for public research. The museum is an active chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
Excursion trains depart on Saturdays at 10:00am and 1:00pm Central Standard Time during the operating season, which in 2026 runs from March 7 to December 19. Some special events add a 3:00pm departure or extra Friday and Sunday runs. The standard gauge ride covers 5.5 miles of the former Alabama Mineral Railroad; a quarter-mile narrow gauge loop also operates.
The museum's 2 ft narrow-gauge steam train, running on a quarter-mile loop, previously served the Birmingham Zoo for many years before coming to Calera. The cab of the 1924 Woodward Iron Baldwin 2-8-0 locomotive is open to visitors via wooden stairs.
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