Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum - History

History

• The Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum, Inc. began as the Heart of Dixie Railroad Club. Its first location was at 18th St. S and 1st Ave. N in Downtown Birmingham, across from the Alabama Power Steam Generation Plant. The cars were largely donated to the Club by their respective railroads. However, the cars were vulnerable to vandals. Several cars were burned in different disputes over territory by homeless people. In the Early 1980s, the Club moved to Calera and secured several 100 acres (400,000 m2) of land between 17th Ave and 20th Ave along 9th St.

• The Calera and Shelby Railroad (the standard-gauge trains) run along a five-and-one-half-mile section of the former L&N Mineral loop, constructed in 1891 to collect the minerals necessary for making iron, then looping back to Birmingham to drop off the minerals at the local ironworks. The line was abandoned when Alabama Power dammed up the Coosa River for a new hydroelectric plant. This would have flooded the bridge over the Coosa River, which was subsequently removed. CSX later pulled up the rails along the line. Eleven miles of right-of-way were purchased by the Heart of Dixie Railroad Club (now Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum, Inc.) when they moved to Calera in the 1980s. Since then, the museum has been replacing the track along the right-of-way. The track currently ends at Springs Junction, Alabama, just East of its crossing of Shelby County Highway 86.

• The Shelby and Southern (the two-foot-gauge train) rolling stock is the former park train of the Birmingham Zoo. Some two-foot-gauge track was purchased, a station and maintenance shed were built, the cars were sandblasted, re-lettered, and re-painted, and the propane fired 4-4-0 steam engine was sent to the Tweetsie Railroad for refurbishment. The S&S opened in 2002 during "Day out with Thomas", a two-weekend period where Thomas the Tank Engine comes to visit the museum between March and April.