Truckee Donner Railroad Society

The Truckee Railroad Museum, located by the historic Railroad Depot in downtown Truckee, tells the story Truckee's railroads and their impact on the town. From the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad, through the variety of logging railroads, and on to Amtrak and the freight railroading of today, railroads have been an integral part of Truckee.   

The TDRRS maintains a prominent display of railroading equipment next to the Union Pacific mainline in the new Truckee Railyard development. The display consists of a former Southern Pacific rotary snow plow and a Bucyrus Erie steam crane which was used for many years to clean up train wrecks on the Donner Pass line.   

The TDRRS operates the Truckee River Railroad, a 7.5" gauge railroad located in the Truckee Regional Park. The TRR weaves through 1500 feet of track, past the children’s playground, out towards the community garden, through a snow shed, past crossing arms and finally stopping back at the train depot.   

Trestle Tours are guided, self-driven tours of old railroad lines of the area. See old grade, ties, rail, logging camp sites, and even trestles! At each stop, the significance of the railroad its history is discussed. At some stops, there are short hikes along old railroad grades.   

The history of Truckee is intertwined with that of the railroads that built and served the town. The Truckee Donner Railroad Society is committed to preserving this history through its museums, interpretive displays, tours, presentations, publications, and contributions to local media.   

Truckee 1927 is a historical operating scale model of Truckee and the surrounding area in the heyday of steam railroading. The goal of the model is to bring to life this colorful era in Truckee’s history and to illustrate the roles played by the area’s railroads and the industries they supported.