The B&O Railroad Museum

 Baltimore, MD

A train selfie during our moment of rest

B&O Railroad Museum

Today we walked to the B&O Railroad Museum.  It's a Smithsonian Affiliate Museum.  Sadly, it isn't on our list of museums we get in for free and it isn't one of the free Smithsonian Museums but it was totally worth the price of admission and the person gave us a Senior Discount.  I was up front with him that I wanted Adult Tickets but he said, "I'm just going to give you the Senior Discount if that is okay".  It was a bitter sweet moment.  I like saving $6 but it left us wondering if we look 60.  

I already mentioned it above, the museum was fantastic and totally worth the price.  It would even be worth full price.  We spent a good 3 hours there.

The first room in the museum featured amazing model trains on loan from the Smithsonian Institution. Here is the text taken right from the display placard. "In January, 1964 the Smithsonian Institution opened "The Railroad Hall" as part of the new Museum of History and Technology (currently the National Museum of American History). The exhibition featured steam locomotives, passenger cars, railroad artifacts, and a comprehensive collection of models depicting the history of locomotive and rolling stock technology.  The exhibit was the brainchild of transportation curator John H. White. White gathered, in model form, examples of locomotives and cars that represented significant advancements in railroad technology. The Smithsonian commissioned additional models to represent those that could not be found. The models in the exhibit are considered by many to be the finest examples of railroad scale models ever produced. The exhibit remained a part of the museum's regular attractions until 2001 when it finally closed after 37 years."

This was one of the outliers when it came to its locomotion system.  Check out those gears!

This display had a cut away and you could press a button to light up an area that had detailed information.

If you look at the "Type" it lists 3 numbers.  This one says 4-4-0.  It took Donna and I a few minutes to decipher the code.  the engine has 4 non drive wheels in the front, 4 drive wheels in the "middle" and no non drive wheels behind the drive wheels.  We saw all kinds of configurations and tried to name the numbers before looking at the type.

The next room was all about time.  Before trains traveled across the country, time was a local thing measured by the sun.  If the sun was right above head where you were it was noon.  Noon was a different time for everyone depending on location and this didn't work well for train schedules or train crossings and caused accidents and delays.  The time zone system was put into place by the train companies and then adopted by everyone else.  Since the initial time zones were implemented, they have changed 15 times due to communities wanting to move time zones to make it easier to work with their neighboring communities.  You can read about that here if you want.

The B&O Railroad was the first public railroad.

A model and the actual boiler behind the model

The next room had a cool model train operating with Baltimore landmarks

Next we entered the impressive roundhouse with trains on every track.

This was one of the earlier passenger cars used for sighseeing (I assume).  Donna and I thought it looked like Casey Junior's Train at Disneyland.

The passenger cars with a me for scale

Some trains had ramps so you could get up to the right height to see in

About half way around the roundhouse we stepped into the outside area to check out the rolling stock that was there

An outside shot of the rebuilt roundhouse.  The original dome collapsed in 2003 due to heavy snow.

In 1985 Cryotrans introduced a Cryogenic rail car for keeping things frozen.  The operated until 2000 and stopped due to the rising cost of CO2.  This is a restored cryo car with a movie playing in it telling the history.

One of the dining cars had displays of the different "Dinnerware" used on the B&O Lines

One train had a model train in it

The workshop had some trains that were being refurbished.  There were 2 awesome 20s Art Deco Engines in there that we both liked

I'm helping!

Donna go "Toot toot!"

Turns out France donated all kinds of War cars to the US.  Not just this one I saw in Missouri in this post.

Everyone needs Safe Firs

This car still had spilled coal

Check out this gangster looking thing!  It's a converted car used for track maintenance.  I think it looks like a car out of Dick Tracey.

I liked this little guy

We wished we could have ridden this.  Donna and I got to ride a hand pump car in Nevada once at the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City, NV

Here is the actual train with that crazy gear drive system

We will probably be back for the farmers market

I liked this cool mural on the walk to the museum

That was our adventure for the day.  We still have a lot to do here.  We are just getting started.  If you missed yesterday's post you can see it here.