Railroad Museum

IT'S A SIGN of the times that when Baltimore's B&O Railroad Museum recently sponsored a trip to Maryland's railroad landmarks, it had to be conducted by bus.Railroads still are a major factor in transporting freight. But, as the statistics for this busy holiday season show, airplanes and cars have replaced passenger trains as the travel mode of choice for most Americans.More than four decades have passed since passenger service ceased from Baltimore to York, Pa., Annapolis and Bel Air. And while state-financed MARC commuter lines still provide service to Washington, they are hardly the kinds of lifelines as the trains of yore, which carried pretty much everything we needed -- from milk to mail -- in addition to passengers.

The B&O Railroad Museum has been awarded a $500,000 federal grant to help reconstruct the roundhouse roof that collapsed after a snowstorm last winter. The grant equals the largest ever awarded by the National Park Service's Save America's Treasures program. B&O officials had sought $1 million, but say they're not disappointed at receiving half that amount. "I'm so pleased that of all the projects they had considered, they chose the B&O to be their top priority," said Courtney B. Wilson, executive director of the Southwest Baltimore museum.

After the turkey, it'll be time to start thinking about those other holidays (as if you had any choice). Proof that the holidays are on their way is in the holiday train gardens set up throughout the area. While they aren't as prevalent as they used to be, you can still find terrifically detailed layouts at some area firehouses and museums. Below are a few of the holiday train gardens you'll want to explore: The B&O Railroad Museum is making up for lost time. Closed for nearly two years because of the devastating snowstorm and resulting roof collapse of February 2003, the museum reopened its doors to visitors earlier this month.

Courtney B. Wilson, a Baltimore native and an expert on trains, has been named executive director of the B&O Railroad Museum, museum officials said yesterday. After a national search that considered more than 50 candidates, the museum's board of directors chose a known quantity. Wilson was the museum's interim director while the six-month search took place, and before that he had been the museum's chief curator since 1997. "The institution knows who I am," Wilson said yesterday. Museum spokeswoman Christine Broda-Bahm said one reason for choosing Wilson was his commitment to making the railroad complex more family-friendly.

A 22-sided "roundhouse" still serves as the centerpiece of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. Its two-tier roof with bridge-like trusses has been faithfully reproduced, and its 60-foot-wide turntable has been rebuilt. Visitors nonetheless will discover a dramatically different place when the West Baltimore museum reopens to the public today - 21 months after it was shut down by a record snowstorm that caused much of its roof to collapse on prized locomotives and railcars below. With help from insurance payments and generous donors, museum directors launched an ambitious effort to rebuild the roundhouse and repair the collection - a project expected to cost $30 million and take years to complete.

Four stainless steel passenger coaches that lumbered along the Pennsylvania Railroad for more than two decades will spend their retirement confined to a mile-and-a-half span of track as the newest additions to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum. The vintage 1950s cars, donated by the Maryland Transit Administration, will add to the museum's fleet of tour coaches that carry visitors along the oldest length of commercial railroad track in the Western hemisphere, said Courtney Wilson, the museum's executive director.

Gently arranged in a section of the B&O roundhouse between an enormous Civil War-era locomotive and an 1862 iron boxcar was a place setting found aboard a railroad dining car a half century ago -- complete with chinaware, silver utensils, a check stub and an unused tea bag. It was precious history to the folks at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore and feared lost in the twisted rubble of wrought iron beams, wood planks and slate shingles in the collapse...

Baltimore's B&O Railroad Museum is embarking on a multimillion-dollar upgrade that, coupled with a new advertising campaign targeted at children, has the facility's director hoping to more than double the number of annual visitors. "I'm looking for a way to attract new audiences," said Courtney B. Wilson, executive director of the museum. "I want to attract the nontraditional visitor to the museum." Among the coming attractions are operational steam and diesel trains, and initiatives that teach about railroad workers, new technology and the impact of the railroad on American culture.

Still uncertain when its badly damaged roundhouse will be fixed, a B&O Railroad Museum official offered yesterday a best-case scenario, saying rebuilding could be completed by the end of this year. "All of this is not subject to great, accurate prediction at this time but the goal is the end of the year," said James T. Brady, chairman of the museum's board of directors. Officials said the remaining portion of the lower roof over the roundhouse will likely have to be taken down in order to rebuild the slate roof over the 45,000-square-foot building.

The roof fell in on railroad history yesterday. The landmark 1884 roundhouse - the center of the B&O Railroad Museum complex a few blocks west of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and one of the shrines of American railroading - lost half its roof under the weight of the weekend's snowfall. The collapse created a gaping hole in the signature building and alarm about possible damage to the historic trains housed there. The damage also caused the indefinite closure of the museum, which attracts 160,000 visitors a year and boasts one of the most significant collection of railroad treasures in the world at a site billed as the birthplace of American railroading.