Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum — Attraction in Prince George

Absolutely LOVELY. Tons and tons of cool railroad history, pins, buildings. A very cool beehive burner as well! Train rides were very reasonably priced as well as admission.

I will say, I did have one negative experience. You were handed what I thought was stickers as the “tickets” to show that you paid for the train ride. I didn’t know they were laminated and reused until after the encounter. I was planning to keep it as a souvenir just because I like little things like that (thinking they were just random stickers that wouldn’t be used again). This younger lady with ginger/blonde hair (iirc) took it from me and I asked if I could have it back, she gave me the dirtiest look with a snotty voice “Uh, no, you only paid for one train ride.” And I’m like, okay? I’m not gonna use it again for another train ride? I can go buy another ticket for 3 bucks if I wanted to. I explained how I wanted it as a souvenir, and she just gave me a look. I said “I’ll tear it in half if you’re worried about me using it again?” And then she took them and brushed past me with a cold stare before ignoring me further on, starting to explain the instructions for safely riding the train.

If she had simply explained they were to be reused, perfectly fine, no further questions asked. I was under the impression it was just another thing that rr museums give people and keep them (I’ve been to several who didn’t reuse). There was no need to be rude about it and that happened just before I left, so it left me a little sour.

I would give it 5 stars but of course what was...

As someone who adores anything on rails, I am normally overjoyed to go to a railway museum, but this place frankly just made me sad. The other people who described it as "like visiting a junk yard" are exactly right. There's some really unique pieces here, and they're just rotting. It's heartbreaking to see.

I'm not really sure what the curator is intending to put on their resume as "strengths" because they certainly can't claim to have safeguarded heritage assets, nor has there been any effort to aid interpretation of the exhibits. In other words, there's no signs anywhere, so unless you already know what you're looking at, your impression is going to be "oh, this is old stuff". Which, if you take a look at the other reviews, that's exactly how people describe it, "old stuff". The whole purpose of a museum is to inform people, and this place just doesn't do it at all, so people come away nonplussed.

While I understand that the restoration of railway equipment is an expensive business, signs are not, so while one can be excused by a lack of resources, the other just strikes me as bad leadership. That begs the question, would this museum have actually secured funding for restoration had the leadership been more competent and motivated? It's not like there's a lack of grants for this kind of stuff in "the impoverished north", so one...

I was excited to visit the Railway museum on a recent trip to Prince George. I went mid morning on a Friday and it was very quiet with only a few other tourists. This was a day before the opening of the mini train starting up for the season so perhaps people were waiting till then.

They have a nice model train in the office, and a good selection of trains in the yard. I found the telecommunications exhibit most interesting, particularly the old style dial phones.

Some trains and box cars you can see directly into and several you can go inside. The rest you wonder around to see.

I was a bit disappointed however with the poor condition of many of the trains, with heavy rust on quite a few of them. I realize this is a small Museum with limited resources, but it looks like there is little attempt to protect or restore many of the trains. With them being outside, they will continue to rust and fall apart.

Otherwise for a train enthusiast it...