Visiting Albuquerque's Rail Yards holiday market + Wheels Museum
Visiting the Rail Yards holiday market in Albuquerque
Christmas marketplaces are a definitely highlight of the holiday season and, this year, since we’re spending our first Christmas in New Mexico we thought we’d seek out the goings on around here and found the Rail Yards where they have the Rail Yards Market. Taking advantage of enormous buildings that used to house the repair shops of the AT&SF railway, the Rail Yards Market is a curated collection of all sorts of local vendors along with close to a dozen food trucks of all sorts.
This market opens several times a year including for two weeks before Christmas where there is music, vendors and more both inside the huge old railroad repair shops and outside as well. While this is technically a farmers’ market it’s really more of a food market in general with a mixture of art and other things thrown in.
What’s in the Rail Yards Market
At its core this is a farmers’ market and there were definitely local growers in attendance with things like apples, broccoli, raspberries, tomatoes and, since this is New Mexico, chiles as well.
In fact chiles were well represented with quite a few providers having their own special hot sauce and salsa recipes and everyone seemed to be providing samples. I had to test them all and there are definitely some of the creators that have their recipes down.
For some reason popcorn is also plentiful and several poppers had spiced their flavored popcorns with variants of chile as well. There were even cookies flavored with the pepper and quite a number of spice vendors that had chile-sourced spices. Again, samples to be had all over the place.
In fact there were so many samples I didn’t stop at any of the dozen or so food trucks in attendance but Peggy did and got a corn and barbecue bowl from Mike’s Mighty Meats, one of our local food trucks, and it was absolutely fantastic.
One of the core things about living in New Mexico is the native as well as Mexican culture that is at the heart of this region. That’s super relevant in the vendors here which included several bakeries that offered traditional Mexican cookies including Biscochitos and Mexican wedding cookies.
We happened by Dulce Tradición’s booth and tried some of their Biscochitos. These are a typical Mexican-style cookie that is really light and crumbly but has this wonderful flavor of cinnamon with a cinnamon sugar coating. But there are also Biscochitos flavored with anise and I personally like these even better. Know that several boxes of these made it out to the car - I’m not saying whether they made it home intact or not.
One of the definite things to know about the market is that, whatever you do, you’re better off coming earlier rather than later only because I found out that the salsa, spices, cookies, popcorn and so many other things you might be hoping to take home with you may very well be sold out by the end of the day. There are a lot of people in attendance and, what with all the samples, you almost can’t avoid stuffing your bag with some of these wonderful treats.
Another dangerous, er, delectable snack we got was from Tim & Larry’s Elixir Chocolates but it was called Timmy Krack Korn Puffs. If you’ve ever been to Buc-ee’s and had their Beaver Nuggets you could liken this to those but this is just so much better. Beaver Nuggets, to me, have that chemically flavor that is so pervasive in processed foods nowadays.
These are like something you’d make at home and they had a variety of flavors but the chipotle cinnamon caramel is the one that made it into our shopping bag. You might also liken the texture of these to original fat Cheetos, not the fried ones. Or, as Eric Cartmann would request, cheesie poofs.
Great, now I’m going to be talking in Cartmann voice for the rest of the morning.
We also saw what had to have been a high school-aged mariachi band who had decorated their instruments with lights for the holidays and played some of the traditional Mariachi-style music. Nice to see kids take an interest in music.
Railroad Repair Shops
The reason this is called the Rail Yard is that that’s what it quite literally is. Apparently these were the largest railroad repair shop for the Santa Fe railroad west of the Mississippi River and they are quite huge old buildings with a lot of glass, much of which is broken nowadays. Trains still roll by the buildings which is entertaining for me.
Back when steam was king it took a lot of people and skill to keep those steam locomotives running. Today’s diesels can go thousands of miles between stops whereas the steam power of yesteryear required almost constant maintenance including refilling the locomotives with water and whatever fuel they were using - coal, oil or even wood.
While you can see two enormous buildings still in place today along with a transfer table, there were much, much more in the past including a turntable and round house. The turntable is still here, the roundhouse is just a memory.
One of the unique things about the Albuquerque Rail Yards is its state of preservation; virtually every building built from 1916 onward remains, including flue (1920), boiler (1923), blacksmith (1917), and machine (1921) shops, an assembly hall (1922), a firehouse (1920), and a car garage (pre-1931), among others.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a locomotive generally left in the morning for a one-way trip of only 100-150, underwent some basic repairs upon arrival, and then returned later in the day to its home shop for further maintenance. Fire tubes, flues, smoke boxes, and boilers all had to be cleaned daily and ash residue left behind by incompletely burned coal had to be continually removed.
The huge transfer table between two enormous railroad repair shops at the Rail Yard in Albuquerque
One more thing - the Wheels Museum
I looked over our website and can’t believe I hadn’t mentioned the Wheels Museum which is also here on the Rail Yards property. The Wheels Museum is an eclectic collection of just about anything with wheels with regular donations adding to what’s inside this place…and outside.
There are cars, trucks, fire engines, horse-drawn wagons, a train ride and quite a few model railroad layouts.
There’s an entire room with plastic models and, if you go at the right time, you’ll get to talk to the curator of that room who can show off some of the really collectible items in the space. I also got to meet author Ronn Perea there several times who has written some books about the region as well as about Route 66.
We’ve really enjoyed being a tourist in our own back yard and realize that there’s so much more to explore in this city.
Should you go?
The Rail Yards market in Albuquerque takes different forms throughout the year and is particularly active as a farmers’ market in the summer. But the sheer size and diversity of the market itself and the vendors that make up the offerings just makes this a very special place to visit. There is a lot of parking in the neighborhood around, including in some vacant lots, and the atmosphere is fun and festive. We really enjoy anything that approaches a community market and this one is the biggest one we’ve been to including the one at the Rose Bowl in L.A. That’s saying something but this is truly a huge space.
