Tehachapi Depot Museum

Great place to learn about the railroad history of Tehachapi. Informative docents, friendly and welcoming. Tour the local murals. Lots of friendly people.

If you are nuts for trains and/​or rail travel, you will love this little place. It’s certainly cute and well done.
if you aren’t that curious about trains or rail travel, this is a quick moderately interesting stop. I definitely fall into the second category, but there really isn’t (let’s be honest) a lot to see in Tehachapi, so we did do a quick walk through this little museum. As a foodie, the only thing I found of real interest was the display of vintage rail dining car menus.
Still, it’s free. And even if you don’t find trains fascinating, there are worse ways to spend half an hour. Friendly staff too that will answer any questions! And although I am not a fan of children and don’t generally recommend any place for ‘em to go… I don’t think this will hold the interest of any except the most hard core «choo choo» obsessed child.

As a free little museum, it was a great place to explore for a while. Not a lot going on, but it was interesting to check out the train history of the region and to see some artifacts. The site itself is very nice and I would suggest exploring the rest of the town a little bit for some antiquing and food.
When we were there, a great little band was playing some western music and just hanging out. Very nice!

The Tehachapi Depot Museum is really built with love and care. The team that has detailed this museum have made it one of the cleanest museums ever. The volunteer staff just loves this place to life. Every exhibit is so clean and the details have been carefully watched. For the history of trains, lots of train artifacts, and a train station that is the way you wish all train stations could be drop in and look over this on your wa between here and there. The bakery next door is great too! I like to come through and stretch the legs, have a nibble and learn something new about train history around Tehachapi and California

Interesting to find out that the route of the railroad line from San Francisco to Los Angeles made this small town of Tehachapi. The museum has a cool timeline of its existence first as a train depot and served as passenger cars until 1972. Now its all freight cargo. There are cool pictures and old artifacts as well as a gift shop. Approximately 34 trains pass here daily. Worth checking out if you are passing by.

5 stars because if the phenomenal volunteers running it. Very informative and nice. Just good people overall. Very friendly to children which helps to keep them interested and included. The depot also have a souvenir shop that’s reasonably priced. Small but to think that all of the stuff inside has been given to them from locals after the fire of the original it’s pretty impressive. Very clean and well kept facilities.

Small, but free and very cool. My son and I love trains, so we decided to check out the loop (no luck there) and then hit the museum. The docents are friendly and very into their job. Most of their interesting artifacts and stories aren’t too exciting for very young children, but are great for kids from 8 to 80.

I strolled through this museum on a whim this morning, as it was on the way to the Tehachapi Apple Festival. It’s a quaint little museum, with quite a bit of history on the railroad that goes through Tehachapi. Nicely maintained museum + grounds… can’t believe it’s FREE too. :) Anyone who has a good 30 minutes would appreciate coming here to learn more about the history of Tehachapi and see some great railroad /​train artifacts!
There’s also a nice patio in the back of the museum for folks to sit and watch the train go by! :)

For a FREE museum this one was alot of fun, it is small but they have so much information about trains. I enjoyed the displays and the employees are very nice. They told us to go outside as the train was coming and waive. They waived back and honked their loud horn. We told them we were visiting for the first time they advised us were to go, we did take their advise and went to see the Tehachapi Loop and Windmill Farm.

One wall of the depot was saved from the fire caused by fireworks. The rest is a replica. This is a free museum so you really can’t complain about the place. Very helpful and friendly docents. Take a tour or explore on your own. Pleasant little museum.

I am so glad they got the depot back up after a bunch of jack-​offs burned it down playing with fireworks. Way to go idiots. The building itself is a replica but luckily they have a lot of the original relics inside. It’s a quick little tour of history. The grounds outside are very nice too. I took my girlfriends here recently for a quick getaway and they were totally into it. Yah, we’re nerds. So what? If you know someone or have kids into trains, this place is definitely cool. It also shows some great views of the historical «Tehachapi Loop.» Yee Haw!

The original depot unfortunately burned down, so the building is a replica. Outside of the depot has plenty of tables and benches so it’s a nice place to sit and have a sack lunch. There’s also public restrooms in the park area. Without many artifacts, there’s not much to see inside the museum. But hey, it’s free so I can’t complain too much.