Discover the Hidden Gems of the Virginia Museum of Transportation

The Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke lives up to its name with a select collection of classic cars, airplanes and, yes, trains that are exhibited outdoors in the railyard. There’s even a Jupiter rocket piercing the sky by the entrance to the museum, which is located in downtown Roanoke’s century-old freight station. 

Vintage Cars and Trucks 

This rare 1922 Piedmont Model 4-30 touring car has a 30-hp Lycoming four-cylinder engine. The Piedmont was an assembled car, with only its body produced at the factory in Lynchburg, Virginia.

There are about two dozen cars on display, beginning with a Virginia-built 1918 Kline Kar. Another Virginia-produced car is the 1923 Piedmont Touring Car Model 4-30. It’s one of three survivors today and was manufactured by the only auto company ever chartered in Virginia. The Piedmont cost considerably more than a Ford Model T and did not gain traction in the market. 

While we were touring the museum, a local class of third graders was on a field trip there. The teacher asked the students to each stand in front of their favorite car. Most of the students ambled over to the 2007 Team Victor Tango self-driving car. One of them cogently noted why he picked it: “Because I can drive it now.” Smart kid.  

This 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid placed third nationally in the U.S. Defense Department’s self-driving car competition back in 2007. It was fielded by “Team Victor Tango Odin” comprised of a group of Virginia Polytechnic Institute students. The number 32 was a tribute to the 32 Virginia Tech students who were tragically killed in a mass shooting that same year.

Larissa and I took up the teacher’s challenge, so she stood in front of the 1954 Lincoln Capri convertible while I reverted to the yearnings of my youth and chose the 1970 Dodge Charger R/T; it won Best in Show at the 2001 Mopar Nationals.  

The self-driving car favored by the students came about from an Urban Challenge issued by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense) to develop a self-driving car that could operate in an urban environment. The robotics students at Virginia Tech entered the competition using a pair of 2005 Escape Hybrids that Ford donated to be heavily modified. And modify they did. The students outfitted the car with a custom drive-by-wire system and computers, laser scanners, cameras, and a global positioning system to identify obstacles, cars, and roads on the course at George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. Virginia Tech came in third in the elite competition, behind only Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.  

The circa 1870 Studebaker Half-Platform wagon got its name from the fact that it had a platform spring arrangement in the rear and elliptic springs in the front.

A row of Studebakers starts out with the oldest wheeled vehicle here, a circa 1870 Studebaker Half-Platform Wagon from the company’s early pioneering days as a wagon shop in South Bend, Indiana. That was before it moved into electric vehicles in 1902 and gas-powered vehicles in 1904. A 1913 Studebaker on view represents the latter foray.  

The Hoosier row continues with a 1950 Studebaker Land Cruiser and a 1955 Studebaker President Speedster in the jauntiest color combination of Hialeah Green and Sun Valley Yellow (the famous lemon/lime combination). The President name, reintroduced for this model year, was applied to an evolution of the original Starliner coupe, properly credited to Raymond Loewy Stylist Bob Bourke. The 1962 Studebaker Lark Taxi, like all other four-door Larks for 1962, shared the 113-inch wheelbase of the station wagons to offer more rear legroom for passengers. 

This 1934 Dodge Brothers school bus was used locally in Roanoke County.

The 1954 Lincoln Capri convertible that was manufactured in Wayne, New Jersey, is a similar model to one that made a cameo appearance in the Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz movie The Long, Long Trailer. They set out on their road trip hauling the trailer with a 1953 Mercury Monterey convertible. But the steep mountain slopes where they were filming required a stronger engine than the Mercury’s 125-hp flathead V-8. Hence, the substitution of the more powerful 1953 Capri’s 205-hp V-8. The Lincoln’s body trim had to be modified to disguise it as the original car. 

A 1934 Dodge Brothers school bus in the collection was manufactured in Hamtramck, Michigan. Unlike in a typical bus, bench seating ran along the side walls and back-to-back down the middle of the bus. The older kids sat by the windows while the young uns sat in the middle leaning on each other’s backs. 

Also on display at the museum was a 1977 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II that once belonged to Bonanza star Lorne Greene. Although the rack-and-pinion steering was an improvement over the steering box in the Silver Shadow I, it’s hard to picture Ben Cartwright bouncing around the Ponderosa Ranch and rounding up cattle in it.  

Automobilia on display included a replica 1930s garage, vintage gas pumps, and memorabilia. Throughout the museum there are computer touch screens with extensive information about the cars by decade. 

Planes and Trains 

One of the vintage planes in the collection is this 1941 Piper Cub Model J-3C-65. It originally had a 65-horsepower Franklin engine.

On the railroad side of the museum there are more than 50 exhibits both indoors and out. The 1951 Diesel-Electric locomotive was designed and manufactured by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors at its LaGrange plant in Illinois. Built for the Wabash Railroad, the 12-cylinder engine was capable of 2,250 horsepower. A plaque signifies it as the 10,000th unit produced by the GM division. 

Visitors can climb inside some of the train cars and a caboose. If you need more of a railroad fix the museum offers a live rail cam at vmt.org/railcam. 

The “Wings Over Virginia Aviation Gallery” is dedicated to the history of flight in Virginia. Visitors are allowed inside a private plane, an Aero Jet Commander, to see how the other half lives. (Maybe I should have stood in front of that one when the teacher said to pick a favorite?) A drop test model of a Boeing F/A-18E hanging from the ceiling represents the “skunk works” projects undertaken at Virginia’s NASA Langley Research Center. 

The Virginia Museum of Transportation holds a comprehensive display of different modes of transportation that should please even the pickiest of visitors and is located at 303 Norfolk Avenue SW, Roanoke, Virginia. Head to vmt.org for more information. 

Michael Milne is the author of the Roadster Guide to America’s Classic Car Museums, now in its third edition and 75 Top Car Museums: Europe & America.