All aboard - for nostalgia

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 15, 1996 | by Tom Yorke

Baltimore's B&O Railroad Museum has delighted train buffs for nearly half a century.

The Mount Clare neighborhood of Baltimore, located just west of downtown, is one of those unsung locales where history quietly unfolded. The first passenger train in the United States departed from Mount Clare for Ellicott City, Md., in 1830. Samuel F.B. Morse sent his memorable telegraph message -- "What hath God wrought?" -- from Washington to Mount Clare in 1844.

Though many Americans may not recognize the name, train buffs make regular pilgrimages there to visit the legendary B&O Railroad Museum. This Valhalla of the nation's rolling stock boasts more than 130 steam, diesel and electric locomotives, passenger and dining cars, boxcars, cabooses and Pullman sleepers. There's a replica of the Lafayette, the first B&O, or Baltimore & Ohio, locomotive to have a horizontal boiler, displayed in the museum's famed roundhouse -- a 22-sided structure built in 1884 as a passenger-car repair facility, with a 123-foot-high ceiling and nearly 43,000 square feet of floor space.

"You have got to see 1604 -- it's right outside the door leading to the yard'" says E.B. Meredith, one of the museum's volunteer guides, who has impeccable technical expertise. From 1942 until 1978, Meredith was a fireman (tending the fires that powered steam engines), then an engineer, for the B&O.

No. 1604 is a C&O, or Chesapeake Ohio, workhorse weighing 320 tons that could produce 7,500 horsepower. Visitors may climb aboard the engine and examine its controls. (A sister, Allegheny, is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Both are showstoppers.

Among the other permanent displays at the museum: horse cars, both open and with sides, that were little more than stagecoaches with rail wheels; a 1937 Buick Roadmaster four-door sedan -- outfitted with rail wheels to serve as an inspection car; and a World War II troop train with extremely close sleeping quarters.

In the "A" yard is the Pennsylvania Railroad's electric locomotive No. 4876, which in January 1953, just days before the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, crashed in Washington's Union Station. A nearby yard contains C&O baggage car No. 314 -- which in 1969 carried Eisenhower's coffin back to Abilene, Kan.

For kids -- and adults -- the museum has a miniature-train display, complete with button controls and an "HO" model-train layout "HO" is the designation for models "one-half" " that of the popular "O" gauge). The museum also has the "Fair of the Iron Horse" exhibit, first put on display in 1893 at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

On weekends and holidays, visitors can take three-mile train rides for only $2 per person (with $6 admission to the museum). Children 4 and younger are free. To get folks in the mood, the museum plays recordings of train sounds, complete with whistles, in the roundhouse.

The B&O Railroad Museum, located at 90 St. in Baltimore, is open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. For information, phone (410) 752-2490.