Monday, January 23, 2017

Forney Transportation Museum

We bought a set of cross country skis off of Craigslist and waited for a three day period of good weather to make a trip to and from Denver to pick them up. While there we thought we'd hit a few local attractions.

The Forney Transportation museum has been on the bucket list and we finally had time to check it out.



This is a museum with an eclectic assortment of railroad equipment, aircraft, automobiles, models, motorcycles, trolleys, bicycles, sleighs and special displays. The special display on our visit was the 1955 thru 1957 (Tri 5's) Chevrolets. Boy did they have some nice examples on display!

One of their staff has restored a Dodgem car which was the first thing you saw upon entering.
It was nicely done.



Several locomotives were on display. This is one of the smaller.



A 1957 Ford Skyliner with a retractable hardtop was shown in mid motion to explain how the folding metal roof actually worked.







This Model T was specially manufactured to be wider than a normal Model T to accommodate overweight owners to sit side by side. Several were made...



A Detroit electric car was on display. These were popular with doctors for house calls and women drivers as it was ready to go at a moments notice and didn't require dealing with hand cranks and gasoline engines.









A later attempt at an electric vehicle was also on display. The Sinclair C5 single seat electric vehicle did not prove to be a market success.





The Kissel brand of automobile was popular in its day, but only about 150 examples remain. Five are to be found at the Forney museum including the racy model that Amelia Erhart owned and drove (rather fast it seems).



This is THE automobile which started the collection. The history of how the cars came along is explained in these panels. Sounds like something I would do...







A very nice example of a Morgan three wheeler.



The Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive is so massive it is hard to fully appreciate from the confines of a building.







The Rio Grande dining car was a nice display.







I was surprised to see the number of Honda motorcycles on display of which I have an example in our garage.







More traditional antique motorcycles were also displayed


















The history of the bicycle was well displayed









One of my favorite aircraft was on display - The Forney Ercoupe. This was a nice example.






I didn't know much about sleighs until this exhibit explained the various types.











Julie got to check a Model T.









The special exhibit of '55 thru 57' Chevrolet's was well worth the price of admission. Numerous beautiful examples were on display.








I like the gas filler behind the tail light








Also on display was one 1955 example ready to be recycled. They asked you to identify the cubed car and surprisingly many can identify it by the remains of the grille pattern



Bruce White's automotive artwork combined with the actual automobile made for a nice touch. I especially liked his style of art.







This is an example of how cars were cooled prior to air conditioning.






Check the museum out when next in Denver!

3 comments:

  1. That was a massive museum! I can't believe that giant locomotive was in there. Very cool.

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    Replies
    1. There was so much more to see and even a lot to see in the area of the gift shop. It is right next door to where they have the annual stock show so you could have a "Twofer" if you picked the right weekend to go.

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  2. What a nice museum--I especially enjoyed reading about the sleighs! Those vintage Chevrolets were beautiful! Thanks for the blog.👍🏼

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