Wheels Museum seeks $4 million expansion at Albuquerque Rail Yards

The Wheels Museum is asking for $3.5 million to $4 million to convert the former Babbitt and welding shops at the Albuquerque Rail Yards into new exhibit space, a proposal that would expand the museum into two vacant industrial buildings tied to the city’s rail history.

Museum director Leba Freed said the museum is running out of room for artifacts, especially larger transportation pieces that cannot be shown well in its current home at 1100 Second SW. The museum opened in 1994 and has been in that building since 2007. Its collection already includes a 1942 Seagrave firetruck, a 1915 Ford Model T Roadster and a wooden airplane, and Freed said the museum is being offered antique vehicles that it does not currently have the space to display.

The target buildings were built in 1921 and 1922 and have been vacant for more than 50 years. Wheels Museum says the Babbitt/Welding Shop has stood empty since the rail yards closed in 1977. The museum’s spring 2026 materials also point to a future role for the Babbitt welding area as a home for New Mexico Railroad Club layouts and exhibits, which would fold another local rail tradition into the project.

The pitch lands inside a larger redevelopment effort that has been underway since the City of Albuquerque bought the Rail Yards in 2007 for $8.5 million. City materials say the site once employed nearly one-quarter of Albuquerque’s workforce and remain clear that any reuse should support jobs, transit goals and other uses that complement downtown. The city’s own plans also show the broader district is already shifting, with the Boiler Shop being converted into Central New Mexico Community College’s film and digital media training facility.

For the museum, the expansion is about more than storage. If fundraising succeeds, the project would add exhibit space, events and family programming, while giving the Rail Yards two more active public buildings instead of two more empty ones. The question now is whether the museum can assemble enough money and partners to turn a preservation idea into a working redevelopment project in the middle of Bernalillo County’s most closely watched historic district.