Bluegrass Scenic Railroad: Through the Horse Farms to the Kentucky River
Near Lexington, Kentucky
The Bluegrass Railroad and Museum in Versailles operates out of Woodford County Park on a five-and-a-half-mile stretch of railroad line originally built by the Louisville Southern Railroad in the eighteen eighties. Today a volunteer-run heritage railroad runs excursion trains along this right-of-way through some of the most scenic horse-farm country in Kentucky, ending at the Kentucky River gorge above Young's High Bridge.
Young's High Bridge spans the river more than two hundred feet above the water, one of the highest railroad bridges in the eastern United States when it was completed in eighteen eighty-nine. The museum, founded in nineteen seventy-six from a model railroad club, has accumulated vintage diesel and steam locomotives, freight cars, and passenger equipment. The train ride itself , through white-fenced thoroughbred farms with the limestone walls of the Kentucky River palisades coming into view at the end , is genuinely one of the more beautiful short excursions in the Bluegrass Region.
