A visit to the Western Railway Museum is a rare opportunity to experience California as it was 100 years ago. Take an electric train trip through the peaceful, picturesque Montezuma Hills over the original historic main line of the Sacramento Northern Railway. As a living history museum, the Western Railway Museum gives visitors the opportunity to ride authentic historic streetcars and interurban electric trains from all over California and the western United States.

In 1946, a group of like-minded individuals learned that an old Oakland streetcar that they had chartered for a day's outing was to be scrapped within a week. They immediately dug into their pockets and gathered together enough money to buy the car right there on the spot. In this spirit of philanthropy and historic preservation, the Bay Area Electric Railroad Association was created to foster interest in streetcar, interurban, and mainline electric railroad operations, and to preserve these rapidly vanishing pieces of history.

The Western Railway Museum was created in 1960 to house the Association's collection of electric railroad equipment, and now contains 100 preserved trains, tens of thousands of photographs, maps, and historical records, and 22 miles of the old Sacramento Northern Railway right-of-way.