The headhouse will be designed to look like a large urban train terminal.[/caption]

Mounds of dirt are piled up behind the Frisco Discovery Center—signs of progress for a unique Frisco attraction that will soon have a more visible presence in the city.

The Museum of the American Railroad is working on Phase 2 of construction that will include infrastructure and a new education center. Eventually, the museum will begin work on a permanent facility with offices and an indoor exhibit space.

“We really want to get to the point of building the permanent buildings,” said Bob LaPrelle, the museum’s president and CEO. “We want to do the build-out. We want to get to the point of seeing things come out of the ground.”

The headhouse will include retail, food services, exhibits and administrative offices.[/caption]

The museum moved to Frisco from Fair Park in Dallas in 2013. Since then, museum staff has set up offices within Frisco Heritage Center until a permanent facility is built.

The infrastructure construction includes finishing three lines of exhibit tracks stretching to 24,000 feet long. These tracks will allow the museum to place much of its train car inventory on permanent exhibit space, LaPrelle said. The tracks will also help make room for more inventory, including 10 Highliner double-deck commuter cars purchased from Chicago regional transit authority Metra. The Metra cars will be placed on one track.

“That really gets us into a more visitor-friendly mode where we can display and access things and give better public tours and provide better educational programs,” LaPrelle said.

Five of the Metra commuter cars will be used for an educational center where the museum can hold its educational programs and presentations. The other five cars will be used for special events.

With the room available in the cars, LaPrelle said the museum could hold up to six classes at one time, allowing more visitors on the site in climate-controlled areas.

“It’s nice to have offices and some interim exhibits here at the Heritage [Center], but [visitors] want to get on the trains,” he said. “While we’re under construction with the remainder of the site, this allows us to do something aboard real train cars that’s really significant.”

The track installation should be done by this fall, LaPrelle said. All of Phase 2 construction, which includes installing a total of 10 tracks, will take about 18 months to complete and cost about $3.1 million.

When Phase 2 is completed, the museum plans to start construction on Phase 3. The first building to be constructed as part of Phase 3 would be the train shed. This open-structured building, which will look like a train station from the 1910s and 1920s, will be more than 100,000 square feet and house and protect some of the museum’s collection.

The next building would be the headhouse that will look like a large city train terminal. The building will be climate controlled with indoor exhibits, retail shops, food services and administrative offices.

The exact start date for Phase 3 construction is dependent on the museum’s funding, LaPrelle said. The museum is a nonprofit organization and has depended largely on grants from the city.

Several businesses have stepped in to help offset the cost of Phase 2 construction, LaPrelle said. For instance, Vulcan Materials Company is donating about 13,000 tons of material for the track installation, he said.

“If I can emphasize any one aspect of this project, it is these companies who have stepped up to help us in lieu of going out and raising cash,” LaPrelle said.

LaPrelle said the museum—though named the Museum of the American Railroad—is about more than just trains.

“What we want to do is be seen as not just a collection of trains that appeals to railroad enthusiasts,” he said. “We really stress the fact that we embrace the culture of the period that we cover: the music, the art, the entertainment, the lifestyles of people.”