B&O Railroad Museum

Bob loves trains so this was the day planned especially for him. We chose to visit this museum on the Wednesday of our trip in order to include the train ride. Above is the outside of the 1884 Baldwin Roundhouse and the outdoor display of model trains. Susan and I expected to be bored...this is one place she had never visited before...but both of us were pleasantly surprised and had a good time.

Most of the B&O Railroad Museum is inside this roundhouse.

B&O refers to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Apparently Baltimore, Maryland is the birthplace of American Railroading and the museum actually has the first mile of railroad track laid in the states.


It was pretty awesome to stand in the roundhouse and look up, but before we actually went inside this area, we first viewed some model trains with explanations of their place in history.

Apparently England had trains before America did...

The history of this model is explained below...

 

I was floored to discover that we took the horse-drawn carriage design and turned it into a railroad car. Notice, you could even sit on the bench up top! Since it would have been steam engines pulling these "coaches" I imagine a person would be lucky to not have singed hair, or any hair, by the end of the ride.

Unbelievable...this was actually a train car!

Obviously not using that silly little carriage with the bench on top for transporting troops and fighting a war. Sorry, Lincoln. I understand why you fought the Civil War, but I still think the North would be better off today if you had let the South go its own way.

I got a chuckle out of seeing this railroad "car" sitting next to the handsome steam engine. Notice that all of the tracks in the floor lead to the center of the building which is a huge, movable, circle with just one track across its diameter.

This is the inside of a post office railroad car and that's my shadow mucking up the picture. Once upon a time the mail got sorted on the train...

There were several play areas for kids...this one was tucked away, out of sight, between two trains.

We had our train ride, but the scenery wasn't very interesting...

I have no idea what kind of sport's team the Ravens are, but it was funny to see this booster sign go zipping by...

We had brought a picnic lunch and ate outside by the model train display.

There were buttons to push to get different trains to move. We didn't push any buttons. The trains never stopped because there were enough kids around to keep the whole display moving!

I saw plenty of trains while growing up on Long Island, NY, but they were all passenger trains. When I went to college in Michigan, I can remember walking to class backwards, waiting for the end of a freight train to go by because I'd never seen a caboose.

Unfortunately, the carousel really was just for kids.

The B&O Railroad Museum is only 10 blocks from Baltimore's Inner Harbor, but we only had enough time left to drive by.

This is as close as we got to seeing the old sailing ships and the National Aquarium.

We wanted to avoid rush hour traffic so it was time to leave Maryland and head back to Manassus, Virginia. Susan and Pastor Bob's church was having a supper that evening so Susan didn't have to cook, but we did have to be on time for the meal.

We had an Asian rice with marinated chicken and apple crisp for dessert. Then it was home for a movie and off to bed.

One more day...