Visitor status: Closed according to local visitor brochure
The Railroad Museum of Virginia represents Portsmouth’s long connection with railways, workshops and the movement of goods through Hampton Roads. It is a different institution from the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke, despite the easily confused names. Portsmouth’s own railway story reaches back to the Portsmouth & Roanoke Railroad, established in 1832, and later connections with the Seaboard system. The museum’s purpose was to preserve not simply railway machinery but the history of the people whose work made the industry important to the city.
There is an important present-day qualification: Portsmouth’s recently published Path of History visitor brochure marks the Railroad Museum of Virginia closed. Its older website still contains visiting information, so those hours should not be treated as a reliable invitation to enter. The historical collection and its story remain worth documenting, but an interior museum visit requires fresh confirmation. The brochure identifies the restored Norfolk & Western locomotive No. 1134 as a notable feature associated with the site, describing it as one of the Lost Engines of Roanoke.
The museum’s account of Portsmouth explains why a railway collection belongs here. Railroad operations supported shops and substantial employment, while the Seaboard established offices in the city. That history provides an industrial counterpart to Portsmouth’s better-known maritime heritage. A harbor and a railroad were complementary parts of a transport network: ships needed inland connections, and railways benefited from access to coastal routes and overseas trade. The story is therefore about the relationship between waterfront commerce and the inland railway system, not only trains viewed in isolation.
The institution’s founding material emphasizes locomotives, photographs and artifacts as ways to introduce railway history to different generations. Historical images can be especially revealing when they show workers, shop buildings or equipment in its original setting: they explain what a preserved engine alone cannot. For anyone exploring Olde Towne’s wider heritage, the railway story adds another layer to the city’s industrial identity.
Visitor information
Researched November 2026.
Sources
More railroad museums in Virginia
- Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Heritage Center — Clifton Forge: Railroad museum and heritage center
- Crewe Railroad Museum — Crewe: Railroad museum and equipment collection
- Eastern Shore Railway Museum — Parksley: Railroad museum and historic equipment collection
- Fairfax Station Railroad Museum — Fairfax Station: Depot and railroad history museum
- Herndon Depot Museum — Herndon: Depot and local history museum
- Lee Hall Depot — Newport News: Historic depot and railroad museum
- Rappahannock Railroad Museum — Fredericksburg: Railroad museum and maintenance collection
- Richmond Railroad Museum — Richmond: Depot and railroad history museum
- All 11 railroad museums and sites in Virginia
Keep exploring
- All heritage sites — museums, stations and landmarks
- Southeast — the trains you can ride in the region