Museum of Route 66 Lincoln Daily News June/July 2026 Page 17 Welch concluded, “The museum will open with its first exhibit in 2026 – John and Darlene Ruh’s one-of-a-kind Route 66 train exhibit – bringing a unique attraction to Lincoln while also supporting the growth and future of our community.” John Ruh has invested a lot of time into designing the train model that is currently located in the basement of the Ruh home in Chicago. For years, the Ruhs have welcomed people into their home to see the train set and watch the train as it traveled the route. Within the landscape of the route are various depictions of sites one would see as they traveled through each state along the Mother Road. John Ruh noted that while it takes folks a couple of weeks to do the route justice if they travel by car, with the train set, they can make the entire trip in about an hour. The Heartland Bank Building is approximately 11,000 square feet, but is divided into three distinct sections. The largest of those three take up about 50 percent of the footprint and is the former banking center on the east end of the building. This is where the City of Lincoln Route 66 Museum will be housed and the new home of the Ruh train set. On Friday, the Ruhs took a tour of the entire building, then returned to the banking center portion to talk about how it will be utilized and how the train may be incorporated into the museum. The Ruhs are donating the train to the city, so it will become city property once everything is settled. John Ruh said that he has for the past five years or so been hoping to find some place to locate the train that would give the public access so that it can continue to be appreciated. He said that giving it to Lincoln was the ideal situation, and that being patient with finding the train a new home had paid off. When asked how they felt about giving away a big part of themselves, Darlene Ruh laughed and said that she was quite alright with the train finding a new home. She explained how the train came to be, saying it began as a little model train set placed around the Christmas tree for their children to enjoy. She said the kids did enjoy it very much as did she and John. Then John had said it would be nice if they could have the train set up year round, and Darlene agreed. She said that the family home had a large basement that was divided into two sections of about equal size. One section was semi-finished and the kids enjoyed being down there quite often. The other half was rougher, and housed the mechanicals for the house such as the furnace. She suggested that John move the train set to the unfinished section of the basement and then the kids (and John) could go down and play with it anytime they wanted to. She said the train from there began to grow into what it is today. She said she personally didn’t pay a lot of attention until one day John came upstairs and said, “you need to come
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzExODA=