Road Trip April - Day 30
- Fred & Em
- Apr 11
- 5 min read
April 11th 2026 (Saturday)
Not the quietest night at Love's.... thank goodness I had ear plugs, but we've woken to glorious sunshine and finally it's getting warmer!! Today's adventure... we're off to see the the National Museum of Transport in Missouri, another much anticiipated stop.
Wow this place is big! Of course the main attraction (for us) is the Big Boy #4006, which is housed here. Visiting this one today means we will now have seen 4 of the 7 remaining Big Boys on static display, plus the only remaining one in steam, UP #4014, a feat we never anticipated when we set out on this road trip all those weeks ago!!
Visiting this particular 'Big Boy' #4006 you also get the chance to climb aboard and go inside the cab where all the magic happens. To see the mass of valves and levers is mindboggling, and all of these would have been needed to control this beast of a machine. You also get the chance to look inside the tender and firebox and it makes you realise just how BIG everything is.
On entry, and exit, you are in awe of the sheer collosal size of this beast as you climb up into the cab and look towards the front of the loco. It makes you feel very small! Driving one of these locos too a lot of concentration but a job that must also have brought a smile to the face of every driver back in the day. Ed Dickens, head of Union Pacific Steam Operations division, has that priviledge today, driving Big Boy #4014 around the US on historic tours.
The rest of the train collection here is wide and varied and for any train enthusiast it is a must place to visit. It is to be noted however, that the trian collection is in various states of repair, from the 'it'll probably never be fixed' to the 'it's being worked on'. It is heartbreaking to see some of these beauties slowly going to rust, but the financial requirement to get even a handful of these repaired doesn't bear thinking about and then when you put the sheer volume of trains & carriages that there is here, the costs would be astronomical and for a charity museum that relies on donations it is clearly not viable. The other challenge is the generation who know how to work on and restores these locomotives are getting older, and these skills aren't often being passed on to the younger generation to continue their work.
It was however, immensely satisfying to be able to walk around the train yard freely, at your own leisure, in and amongst all of the locomotives and carriages, and absorb the majesty of these historic beasts in their peaceful slumber.
There was very few sections that were off limits, but to have this freedom to walk around, is especially nice. It's refreshing not to be in an environment that is all meticulously clean, where often you are limited to only seeing the 'good bits'. To be able to see, feel and be amongst all the dirt, oil & decay, it brings a whole new feel to the experience, a certain rawness to the visit and it is refreshingly more enjoyable.
We spent over 3hrs looking round the train yard, Big Boy, other locos, and the many carriages that are housed here. We even ended up in one of the gift shops where Fred bought a few G gauge carriages for his own new model train collection.
After all that 'train' experience, it was time for a quick bite of lunch, before heading to look at the automobile section of the museum. Whilst I truthfully didn't find this quite such an impressive collection as the trains, despite that it has been nicely laid out and in a pristine environment with plenty of information to read about an interesting collection of cars.
Then it was off to the gift shop, to purchase the obligatory memento fridge magnet for our ever expanding collection of places that we have visited. This Museum is definately worth a visit, there's certainly a lot to keep everyone in the family entertained and occupied. You can even have a ride around part of the site on the mini 'steam' loco railroad, which of course we just had to do!
On our way out of the Museum, towards the bottom of the car park, we came across the only one of the original four remaining, now fully restored legendary Mack RS-712LST truck from the movie Convoy we had watched the other day. Check out our daily blog here for more on this. It was nice to get the chance to see it up close, including the legendary black angry rubber duck atop the radiator grille!
Museum done, and as we were in St Louis, we took a little detour to find the Gateway Arch National Park, and another to cross of our list of all the 63 US National Parks to visit on our travels. Of course we hadn't planned this visit very well and unfortunately arrived the evening a football game was due to be played at the bowlplex so the roads were pretty manic!! Not ideal when in the RV worrying about height/weight restrictions, one way streets and trying not to get in anyone's way. But eventually we found a quiet road to park Wanda2 some 10min walk away.... admittedly we did worry the area we had parked her in didn't seem the most desirable, so we spent the whole of our visit to the arch wondering whether we'd have any wheels left when we got back to her. Fortunately, we still had all six wheels when we returned and so an unnecesary worry.
The Gateway Arch is open to the public and I gather there's a tram that takes you to the top but unfortunately we didn't have time to do this on this occasion due to the lateness of the day, and due to the unplanned visit here, we didn't get a magnet either! Oh well, it just means we will have to come back again.... one day!
But now it was time to hit the road, as we needed to start our travel home tonight. We have aprox 580miles / 9.5hrs travel time left, so our plan is to do 3hrs tonight then rest up.
The cheapest fuel we found today was $3.89, which was an unexpected bargain, otherwise generally the prices seems to be around $4.30 upwards. It certainly pays to shop around!! Fred recently discovered this US fuel price mapping app that other's might find useful too.
Tonight's rest stop was yet another Love's Travel Stop that I found near Louisville, and, yes, it's another 'thank goodness for ear plugs' night. But it's worth it for the convenience of a free overnight stop.
Road Trip Day 30 - we've driven approximately 350 Miles today!
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