KC Rail Experience at Union Station

The KC Rail Experience, a permanent exhibit at Union Station Kansas City, focuses on the way Union Station and its rails helped to shape Kansas City and America. The exhibit is devoted to human stories that educate visitors how trains and rails work. Dimensional Innovations worked with the project stakeholders to design and install the 9,000-square foot museum space on a fast-track timeline.

An important goal was to ensure the authenticity of the experience, connecting the historic Union Station building to its history through this exhibit. To understand Kansas City’s history with trains, DI’s team frequently met with curriculum developers, Union Station staff and a rail advisory council of stakeholder community members and rail professionals. Using this expertise for ideas and research offered valuable insight.

With a limited collection of items to display in the exhibit, DI focused on creating an engaging and interactive experience centered on human stories. The interactive exhibits, including the locomotive simulator, are all devoted to the human stories of the rail.

Visitors entering the museum experience the many offerings through stories taking place between 1915 and 1955 told through the eyes of the “ghosts” of Union Station. These 22 historical figures range from building architect Jarvis Hunt and station master Charles Clancy to figures like a WWII sailor and a Harvey girl.

Oversized wall murals feature historic scenes gathered from newspaper archives and historical societies. Combining created graphics with scanned artifact imagery brings to life the history of the exhibit while seamlessly integrating it with current technology.

Along with the human stories, the museum showcases vintage rolling stock, 2,000 square feet of vestibule areas, artifacts from private collections, a locomotive simulator and a number of A/V and interactive exhibits.