Museum Builds Steam for Expansion

Members of the Railroad Museum in Lomita have launched their first major expansion project in decades by trying to raise $40,000 to build a 35-foot water tower.

It is the first in a series of plans underway at the specialized museum to add three buildings and more exhibits at a cost of $5 million.

“We are going to have quite an accomplishment when it is all done,” said Alice Abbott , the museum’s manager.

Museum members want to construct a large building to house a narrow-gauge locomotive, a 6,000-square-foot model train layout, a 70-seat theater and a reference library. A second building would be dedicated to model train displays and layouts; a third would be used as a workshop.

Irene Lewis founded the museum in 1967 when she donated a quarter-acre of land. She was inspired by a similar railroad museum in Denver. Lewis dedicated the museum to her late husband, Martin, a locomotive engineer. When she died in 1990, she left another acre to the facility, making the expansion projects possible.