Joliet develops railroad museum at old Union Depot Tower

Joliet is months away from opening a museum that will tell the city’s railroad history in a building that still contains the equipment that guided trains through downtown.

The city and Joliet Area Historical Museum recently received a $60,000 grant that will be used to put finishing touches on the Union Depot Tower.

The tower, built in 1913 across the tracks from the old Union Station, was incorporated intact into the new Joliet Gateway Center train station that today is the hub of passenger train travel through Joliet. The Gateway Center station opened in 2018 with the switching equipment from a bygone era contained in a separated area that eventually will be a museum.

That day should come this fall, organizers of the museum said.

“We want to incorporate features of the railroad companies that came through Joliet,” city Planner Jayne Bernhard said Thursday while giving a tour of the unfinished museum.

The grant money from the state’s Route 66 Grant Program will be used to develop story boards with photographs and text to tell the story of the railroad companies that moved freight and passengers through Joliet during most of the 20th Century.

Such boards already line the walls of the future museum, depicting the construction of Union Station and its opening in 1912. Visitors will be able to get a sense of the station as it was then and look out the tower windows to see it today.

Other boards explain the workings of the locking bed machine, the central attraction of the future museum, and its 224 pistol grips used to manually control the switching of tracks and signals to trains.

All that since 2015 has been done from a remote BNSF Railway switching center in Omaha.

“They shut this down and three minutes later the Omaha center went live,” Bernhard said.

The remaining train equipment, sign boards and extra features like lookouts onto the Joliet cityscape and landmarks, including Jacob Henry Mansion, are designed to appeal to railroad buffs and curiosity seekers alike.

“We want it to be something that people who are really into railroad history will find worthwhile but also accessible to average people,” Benhard said.

The city owns the building, and the Joliet Area Historical Museum will operate the museum.

Museum Executive Director Greg Peerbolte said the museum will provide a place for local rail enthusiasts while also making Joliet more of a draw to those from outside the area.

“I think having a dedicated space for rail fans to come and see will put us more on the map than we already are,” Peerbolte said. “They know Joliet. We want to get to know them.”

The city and museum at one time looked to open the museum in March. The opening was delayed with the availability of new grant money, which organizers said will be used to complete the adaptation of the Union Depot Tower into a museum.

Peerbolte said he believes the museum can be open by sometime in September.

The informational aids help novices appreciate what they’re seeing as well as get a sense of the importance of the railroads to Joliet.

“The building,” Peerbolte said, “is an artifact in itself.”