Before the invention of trains, mustachioed villains could only place their tied-up hostages on a muddy road and hope a donkey cart came by. Turn up the melodrama with this Groupon.

$15 for Admission for Two to the Golden State Limited Train Ride (Up to $30 Value)

Departing on Saturdays and Sundays most of the year, the Golden State Limited ferries museum guests on a 10-mile round trip aboard a diesel-electric locomotive. Passengers enjoy the rugged scenery of the Southwest, including the Campo Creek Viaduct and International Tunnel #4, as it rolls outside their vintage cars, soon slowing to a halt as the train pulls back into the museum. There, guides reveal the workings of old steam engines, freight equipment, and an old-fashioned Railway Post Office car.

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum

Though dinosaurs haven't roamed the earth for 65 million years, another hulking beast first roared through the American countryside only two centuries ago. That creature was the locomotive, and the subject of the preservation and public education efforts at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum. There, engineers conduct hands-on lessons in the form of one-hour or full-day excursions in vintage cars amid the last transcontinental link of track ever constructed in the United States. Inside the museum proper, experts restore railroad artifacts while docents lead tours among antique cabooses' steel frames and wheels made of pocket watches, and a gift shop is available in the Campo depot. Notable exhibits include the visionary industrialist John D. Spreckels’s personal business car and a San Diego and Arizona Railway steam locomotive built in 1904.