Train lovers in the Old Pueblo have an opportunity to talk all things vintage locomotives at the 2026 Silver Spike Railroad Jubilee set for 10 a.m. Saturday, March 21. Of course, nonvintage train lovers are also welcome. 

The event will take place at the Southern Arizona Train Museum, 414 N. Toole Avenue. Admission is free.

The celebration marks the museum’s 21st anniversary and the 146th anniversary of the arrival to the Old Pueblo of the Southern Pacific Railroad. 

“What’s important is the people who dedicated their lives here to Tucson,” Ken Karrels, a Southern Arizona Train Museum volunteer, said. “Up until 1880, Tucson was just kind of a dusty town with about 7,000 people and today it’s half a million. … It’s the railroad that really built (the town).” 

The original silver spike of 1880 will be displayed and at 10 a.m. there will be a mayoral proclamation and craft show. Volunteers, benefactors and retired railroad employees will be inducted into the Silver Spike Hall of Fame. Several descendants of the forefathers who participated in the original silver spike celebration will be on hand, many in costume, a raffle will be held and the 4th U.S. Cavalry Band will perform beginning at 9:30 a.m.

The original silver spike ceremony took place on March 20, 1880, so part of the ceremony will feature a kind of mini-reenactment of that day with the descendants. It’s all part of something the museum’s staff and volunteers find important.

“The idea is education but in a humorous way,” Karrels said. 

The museum is small but gives a good look at what a passenger might have found in a Southern Pacific rail car. Find dishes, a conductor uniform and a kind of wheel that shows how long it took to take a train to both New Orleans and Los Angeles from Tucson, to name a few things. 

Outside is a real, true train engine, a 1673 Locomotive, that visitors may climb on and get a peek at where a train engineer sits.

As with the museum, the 2026 Silver Spike Jubilee is free to attend. For Karrels, this is a time to remember how Tucson became accessible and how goods became accessible to Tucson, making it into a city but it wasn’t the iron horse alone that did it.

“What’s important here is its history, it gives railroad history a future,” Karrels said, “and preserves it and protects it and honors the men and women who worked hard and toiled in the soil so they not be forgotten.”   

2026 Silver Spike Railroad Jubilee
WHEN: 9:30 to 11 a.m. Saturday,
March 21
WHERE: The Southern Arizona Train Museum, 414 N. Toole Avenue
INFO: Admission is free. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, closed on holidays, For information, visit southernarizonatrainmuseum.org/