The main reason I chose to stop in Elkhart, IN is the National New York Central Railroad Museum. It is home to one of the last Mohawk locomotives, number 3001 as well as a working scale model of a Mohawk steam engine.
It is a very large locomotive, the pink 1.5l water bottle in one picture gives you a sense of scale. Its size made it very powerful but fuel hungry. No matter how bad your car’s fuel consumption is relative to a Prius, it will outperform the 8 miles per ton of coal of a Mohawk.
Accompanying the Mohawk there is a collection of NYCR cabooses in an unusually bright colour scheme and a wooden cargo car.
Inside the museum houses many items saved from the Elkhart depot operations, including a date nail collection, lots of railway lamps and a round work allocation board. The yellow notice in the picture explains how it worked, an efficient if space consuming way of work allocation.
There is also a large model railway display which the volunteer docent switched on for me.
The most unusual exhibit is this replica locomotive made out of 412,250 toothpicks and 40lbs of glue. Not something I would have the patience to build!
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