I can't speak to that, but Aiken, SC has put together a "decent" museum by refurbishing the depot downtown and putting together a series of archives, photos and exhibits. They are also refurbishing one or two passenger cars. I found it because my daughter lives there. It is a nice browsing museum. Aiken once had quite a railroad history (on Southern) and passenger trains once paid call for New York to Atlanta (and beyond). Aiken is "old money" and a mecca for horse racing. The rich once maintained winter homes to take advantage of the warmer clime, and they commuted back and forth seasonally to New York, Connecticut and such parts. Many race horses are based there.
When you visit the museum, you can almost "feel" the atmosphere of trains backing into the "wye", and porters busily loading baggage, and the hustle and bustle of the crowds bound for somewhere. Aiken is a charming town and worth the detour off I-20 to spend a few hours browsing at the depot and the downtown shops of which there are many. While many larger towns have "died" with the influx of malls and shopping centers, Aiken seems to have the right combination of knowledge and spunk to keep a thriving downtown area of several blocks going both parallel and across the "square". And, this, despite, the boulevards that sprang up around malls and essentially killed bigger towns who either gave up trying to revive the city, or embarked on programs that just didn't work! Aiken has the same long, crowded boulevard as the other long-dead towns with the empty store fronts and whiskey- filled derelicts hanging around. It has the Walmarts (2),
the Home Depot, Lowes, a Cracker Barrel and a long line of well-known restaurants and businesses. And its HALF the size of the town in which *I* live: all the "downtown" moved with Belks Department Stores and the mall in 1976. We still have a couple of Amtrak trains that come thru in the wee hours of the night, and we are located on the NS mainline. Main Avenue is a slum. Some store fronts were torn down leaving an empty hole downtown, and paint-peeling old buildings revealing ancient signs of 1890's businesses long gone. Most people never GO downtown anymore: its too dangerous. Oh, there's a couple of restaurants that have moved in; one in the old Webb theater bldg. They feature upscale meals and sandwiches, and show old AMC movies to showcase the building's heritage as a movie theater. There's movie posters of long-ago films that played there---at which I, as a young man, attended. They spent millions on "revitalization" projects and dug a ditch for the railroad tracks: The old depot that I worked in as an Extra Board Clerk and Agent is high and dry and serves as a feed store now.......................... None of their remedies worked. The town is a slum. It became so in '76 and remains so now. Nothing will bring it back. Its too late. The sprawl has taken over, and the boulevard (Franklin Ave) has become "the town" while the old buildings that served as town since 1870's sit in silent decay. You can't watch trains in Gastonia: there's a ditch where the main line used to be. Oh, you can go a bit north or south of town and find a spot to watch the hotshots bound for Atlanta. Better place is Ranlo near the bakery, or, better still, Lowell, NC. There's a parking lot behind the police station or the little city hall. This is where I watched 611 blast thru one night around 1993-94 making track speed because they were late and trying to stay ahead of the Crescent so they wouldn't have to clear up.
But if you are traveling and have some time to kill, visit Aiken's little museum. Lots of history there!
GF