The Forney Museum of Transportation is Denver’s most delightfully crowded garage: a warehouse-sized hall packed with more than 800 transportation artifacts, from horse-drawn buggies and fire engines to a giant Union Pacific “Big Boy” steam locomotive and the bright yellow car Amelia Earhart once drove.

The museum says its collection began more than 70 years ago with a single 1921 Kissel and grew to include vehicles of every kind: buggies, carriages and sleighs, motorcycles, bicycles, aircraft, steam and diesel-electric locomotives, rail cars, fire apparatus, public transit, art and die-cast models. Highlights include Union Pacific Big Boy No. 4005, one of the largest steam locomotives ever built, a Denver & Rio Grande dining car, a Colorado & Southern caboose, an 1888 Denver cable car, a Stutz fire engine, an Indian Motocycle collection, an 1817 Draisine bicycle and a 500-piece Matchbox collection. Fans of aviation history make a beeline for Amelia Earhart’s 1923 Kissel “Gold Bug.”

The Forney is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit at 4303 Brighton Boulevard, just north of downtown, and parking is free. Give yourself plenty of time to wander the rows, peek into rail cars and read the stories behind each machine. On the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, the Moffat Modelers open their 20-by-100-foot N-scale layout of the Denver-to-Moffat Tunnel rail line, and on second Saturdays kids ages 5 to 17 can build and take home a free plastic model car from 10 a.m. to noon. Railroad fans can make a full day of it with the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden or a stop at Denver’s restored Union Station.

The Forney hosts model-railroad open days with the Moffat Modelers and monthly Model Car Make and Take sessions for young builders, along with special events through the year. Schedules can change, so check the events calendar at forneymuseum.org before you go.