Skip to main content
2015
2015

Thomas F. Grose Archival Facility, which houses the Harvey House exhibit and the library, was dedicated in January, 2015.

2011
2011

Main visitor parking lot was paved, and the front entrance remodeled. Several generous gifts allowed the Museum to begin a focused program of car and locomotive refurbishment using a contracted painter to supplement its volunteers. The program has turned out beautifully repainted railcars and locomotives at an impressive pace, encouraging additional donations to support the program.

2007
2007

The 62,000 square foot Ron Ruffulo Carhouse was completed. The Ruffullo Carhouse has six tracks inside, each 600 feet long. This facility doubled the amount of indoor storage space for the Museum’s collections, permitting a major cleanup and reorganization of the entire site.

2006
2006

OERM celebrated its 50th Anniversary!!

2001
2001

Grizzly Flats was further expanded with the addition of a replica Southern Pacific gallows type turntable, built on site by Museum volunteers with financial support from the Kimballs.

Acquired 19 additional acres of adjacent property, which gave it the ability to site a major new collections storage facility.

1993
1993

Landscaped park was added, connecting the center of the Museum with the new enginehouse.

1992
1992

Ward and Betty Kimball donated their 3-foot gauge Grizzly Flats Railroad along with major funding to help assure its continued preservation. The four track Grizzly Flats Enginehouse opened.

1986
1986

Carhouse #4 opened raising the number to fifty railcars in the collection with an indoor home (representing about one-third of the total collection at that time). This same year also saw electrification extended for several blocks over the trackage connecting the Museum’s main line to the Santa Fe trackage in downtown Perris.

1983
1983

A third carhouse opened in 1983, and construction of an ambitious shop facility progressed significantly.

1978
1978

In 1978, regular steam locomotive operations began, together with the concept of holding a large Rail Festival event in an effort to draw more visitors.

1977
1977

A major extension of the standard gauge mainline trackage in 1977 permitted a better demonstration of the growing collection of mainline railroad equipment.

1975
1975

A major extension of the standard gauge mainline trackage in 1977 permitted a better demonstration of the growing collection of mainline railroad equipment.

1973
1973

Adjacent land was purchased, and the completion of a continuous trolley loop occurred.

1971
1971

The Santa Fe Railway donated the historic 1892 Perris depot to the Museum. Although at the time the Museum could not yet operate its trains there, the building would later become a focal point in downtown Perris for both the Museum and the city’s redevelopment efforts.

1969
1969

In 1969 construction started on the first Carhouse, beginning the process of providing protective cover for the growing collection.

1968
1968

By 1968 A trolley line had been constructed along the periphery of the original property, and the Pinacate Station gift shop and a public/member restroom building both opened.

1965
1965

By the mid-1960s, a core group of dedicated volunteers began to emerge. From among this core emerged leaders who began planning for the Museum’s future. They identified more land, protective carhouses, a public restroom and a gift shop as priorities.

1963
1963

With streetcar service ending in Los Angeles in 1963, the Orange Empire Trolley Museum began to gather momentum. Museum members travelled to sites throughout the region salvaging abandoned railway infrastructure that could be reused for the Museum. California Southern Railway Museum shared the site, and mainline railroad equipment continued to appear in large numbers.

1960
1960

As the 1960’s began, tracks were extended further, and more trolleys and hardware acquired.

1959
1959

The Orange Empire Trolley Museum found a new home on an abandoned railroad right-of-way just outside of rural Perris, California, some 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Except for a small two-room farmhouse and a rock dugout dating from the 1880s, the site was a lonely, semi-desert field. There was no running water, no indoor plumbing, not much of anything but trolley cars and youthful enthusiasm.

The early years at Perris were a time of intense activity, though mostly on weekends, as almost all of the participants worked regular weekday jobs. Track was hurriedly extended as more and more trolleys arrived, eventually evolving into a yard arrangement. The few visitors that found the place thought of it as “the trolley farm” and this moniker would stay with the Museum for years to come. By late 1959 a used Cummins diesel generator power plant was acquired and set up to provide the 600 volt DC electricity for trolley car operation. Overhead wire followed and operations were soon possible on a short stretch of track.

1958
1958

The Orange Empire Traction Company’s first home was at Travel Town, an already-established display of retired railway equipment in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. By 1958, the group had changed their name to the Orange Empire Trolley Museum and had brought 10 pieces of equipment to Travel Town. Then came the event that started the wheels in motion to form what would become today’s Museum. Ironically, it was the same type of event that had hastened the demise of the equipment they were collecting: the construction of another of L.A.’s famous freeways. The group was informed that the new Ventura Freeway would cut directly through Griffith Park, isolating the site from access to major roadways

The Beginning
1956

A group of enthusiasts known as the Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California formed an Equipment Committee set out to preserve some of the Los Angeles trolleys for future generations. In 1956, this group formed the Orange Empire Traction Company and stepped up their preservation efforts even further. Many were still teenagers when the organization was founded, and their youthful enthusiasm was soon put to good use as the club began acquiring trolleys for preservation.