Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum and Mount Clare Station | |
![]() Mount Clare Station and roundhouse | |
Location | 901 West Pratt Street Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
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Coordinates | 39°17′7.42″N76°37′56.63″W / 39.2853944°N 76.6323972°W |
Built | 1829 (original site) 1851 (current station structure) 1884 (roundhouse) |
Architect | Ephraim Francis Baldwin |
Architectural style | Georgian |
Website | http://www.borail.org/ |
NRHP reference No. | 66000906 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 [1] |
Designated NHL | September 15, 1961 [2] |
Designated BCL | 1975 |
The B&O Railroad Museum is a museum and historic railway station exhibiting historic railroad equipment in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) company originally opened the museum on July 4, 1953, with the name of the Baltimore & Ohio Transportation Museum. It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S. [3] [4] The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, and retains 40 acres of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops site, which is where, in 1829, the B&O began America's first railroad and is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States. [5]
Mount Clare is considered to be a birthplace of American railroading, as the site of the first regular railroad passenger service in the U.S., beginning on May 22, 1830. [6] [7] It was also to this site that the first telegraph message, "What hath God wrought?" was sent on May 24, 1844, from Washington, D.C., using Samuel Morse's electric telegraph. [8] [9]
The museum houses collections of 19th- and 20th-century artifacts related to America's railroads. The collection includes 250 pieces of railroad rolling stock, 15,000 artifacts, 5,000 cubic feet (140 m3) of archival material, four significant 19th-century buildings, including the historic roundhouse, and a mile of track, considered the most historic mile of railroad track in the United States. Train rides are offered on the mile of track on Wednesday through Sunday from April through December and on weekends in January. In 2002, the museum had 160,000 visitors annually. [3]
The museum also features an outdoor G-scale layout, two indoor HO scale model, and a wooden model train for children to climb on. From Thanksgiving through the New Year, local model railroad groups set up large layouts on the roundhouse floor and in select locations on the grounds of the museum. A museum store offers toys, books, DVDs, and other railroad-related items.
The museum and station were designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1961. [1] In 2008, the museum won three awards in Nickelodeon's Parents' Picks Awards in the categories of Best Museum for Little Kids, Best Indoor Playspace for Little Kids, and Best Indoor Playspace for Big Kids. Television and film actor Michael Gross is the museum's "celebrity spokesman". [10]
The museum definitively documented 24 Freedom Seekers that used the B&O Railroad on their journeys on the Underground Railroad – 8 of which traveled through the museum's historic site of Mount Clare. In 2021, the museum's Mount Clare Station building was designated as a National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site. [11]
The museum also hosts an annual Day Out with Thomas event every year, complete with the train's excursion including a non-powered Thomas the Tank Engine replica.
The inaugural horse-drawn B&O train traveled the 13 miles (21 km) of the newly completed track from Mount Clare to Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City, Maryland), on May 22, 1830, the first regular railroad passenger service in the U.S. [6] The existing Mount Clare station brick structure was constructed in 1851. [6] The adjacent roundhouse designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin was built in 1884 to service the B&O's passenger cars. [3]
For much of its history, the B&O had been collecting locomotives and other artifacts from its history for public relations purposes. This collection was stored in various places until the railroad decided to centralize it in a permanent home. The car shop of the Mt. Clare Shops was chosen, and the new museum opened on July 4, 1953.
The museum ended up outliving its parent B&O Railroad, and was kept intact by both the Chessie System and CSX Corporation. In 1990, CSX deeded the property and collection to the newly formed, not-for-profit museum organization governed by an independent board of directors and provided it with a $5 million endowment. In 1999, [12] the museum became affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. [13]
In the early morning of February 17, 2003, heavy snow from the Presidents' Day Storm collapsed half of the roof of the museum's roundhouse. [7] Although the structure's central support columns remained standing, the supporting iron struts and ties of the destroyed roofing sections failed under the snow load. The museum suffered heavy damage not only to the roundhouse itself but also to the collection within the roundhouse. Some of the items were damaged beyond repair. Reporting on the devastation the following day, The Baltimore Sun said, "...hours after the collapse, columns of mangled steel stuck out from the roundhouse ... Locomotives and passenger cars in the museum's collection, some dating from the 1830s, could be seen covered with snow and debris." [3] The roundhouse, with a newly repaired roof, reopened to the public on November 13, 2004, and the damaged locomotives and cars were surrounded by a plexiglass barrier. As of September 2015, all damaged exhibits have been restored to their original appearance.
After the roof collapse, subsequent fundraising and restoration allowed the museum to upgrade many of its facilities. In 2005 the museum opened a new service facility west of the roundhouse for restoration of historical equipment and maintenance of active equipment.
The B&O Railroad Museum possesses the oldest and most comprehensive American railroad collections in the world. [14] Dating from the beginning of American railroading, the collection contains locomotives and rolling stock, historic buildings, railroading artifacts, and an extensive archives and research library that documents the impact of American railroading and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad on American economics, culture, and history.
The collection is being made available through an online searchable database.
External videos | |
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The museum's rolling stock collection include both originals and replicas, some of which were built by the B&O for its centennial "Fair of the Iron Horse" in 1927. Collection highlights include:
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States. It operated as B&O from 1830 until 1987, when it was merged into the Chessie System; its lines are today controlled by CSX Transportation.
Chessie System, Inc. was a holding company that owned the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the Western Maryland Railway (WM), and Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad (B&OCT). Trains operated under the Chessie name from 1973 to 1987.
A railway roundhouse is a building with a circular or semicircular shape used by railways for servicing and storing locomotives. Traditionally, though not always the case today, these buildings surrounded or were adjacent to a turntable.
The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) that operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation.
Tom Thumb was the first American-built steam locomotive to operate on a common-carrier railroad. It was designed and constructed by Peter Cooper in 1829 to convince owners of the newly formed Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) to use steam engines; it was not intended to enter revenue service. It is especially remembered as a participant in a legendary race with a horse-drawn car, which the horse won after Tom Thumb suffered a mechanical failure. However, the demonstration was successful, and the railroad committed to the use of steam locomotion and held trials in the following year for a working engine.
Chesapeake and Ohio 614 is a class "J-3-A" 4-8-4 "Greenbrier" (Northern) type steam locomotive built in June 1948 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) as a member of the J-3-A class. As one of the last commercially built steam locomotives in the United States, the locomotive was built with the primary purpose of hauling long, heavy, high speed express passenger trains for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway such as the George Washington and the Fast Flying Virginian.
Reading 2101 is a preserved American class "T-1" 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotive constructed in September 1945 for use by the Reading Company. Constructed from an earlier "I10SA" 2-8-0 "Consolidation"-type locomotive built in March 1923, the 2101 handled heavy coal train traffic for the Reading until being retired from revenue service in 1959. Withheld from scrapping, the 2101 served as emergency backup power for the three other T1 locomotives serving the Reading's "Iron Horse Rambles" excursions until being sold for scrap in 1964.
The Baltimore Belt Line was constructed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in the early 1890s to connect the railroad's newly constructed line to Philadelphia and New York City/Jersey City with the rest of the railroad at Baltimore, Maryland. It included the Howard Street Tunnel, the Mount Royal Station for B&O's Royal Blue Line passenger trains, and the first mainline railroad electrification in the United States. CSX Transportation currently operates the line as part of its Baltimore Terminal Subdivision.
The President Street Station in Baltimore, Maryland, is a former train station and railroad terminal. Built in 1849 and opened in February 1850, the station saw some of the earliest bloodshed of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and was an important rail link during the conflict. It is the oldest surviving big-city railroad terminal in the United States.
Camden Station, now also referred to as Camden Street Station, Camden Yards, and formally as the Transportation Center at Camden Yards, is a train station at the intersection of South Howard and West Camden Streets in Baltimore, Maryland, adjacent to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, behind the B&O Warehouse. It is served by MARC commuter rail service and local Light Rail trains.
The Mount Royal Station is a historic building in Baltimore, Maryland, which was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's third train station in Baltimore, Maryland, and is now part of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) campus. The station was at the north end of the Baltimore Belt Line's Howard Street tunnel in the Bolton Hill neighborhood. It was the first railroad station in the world to have electrified passenger trains when it opened on September 1, 1896, serving the B&O's famed Royal Blue line. Following its closure as a railroad station in 1961, it became part of the Maryland Institute College of Art, where it now houses the Middendorf Gallery, as well as studio and classroom space for the university's sculpture and fiber departments.
The Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum in Ellicott City, Maryland, is the oldest remaining passenger railway station in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. It was built in 1830 as the terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line from Baltimore to the town then called Ellicott's Mills, and a facility to service steam locomotives at the end of the 13-mile (21 km) run. The station, a National Historic Landmark, is now used as a museum.
Mount Clare, also known as Mount Clare Mansion and generally known today as the Mount Clare Museum House, is the oldest Colonial-era structure in the City of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. The Georgian style of architecture plantation house exhibits a somewhat altered five-part plan. It was built on a Carroll family plantation beginning in 1763 by barrister Charles Carroll the Barrister, (1723–1783), a descendant of the last Gaelic Lords of Éile in Ireland and a distant relative of the much better-known Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737–1832), longest living signer of the Declaration of Independence and the richest man in America in his later years, also the layer of the First Stone of the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, just a short distance away in 1828.
The Mount Clare Shops is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States, located in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1829. Mt. Clare was the site of many inventions and innovations in railroad technology. It is now the site of the B&O Railroad Museum. The museum and Mt. Clare station were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
Cumberland station is a historic railway station in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland. It was built in 1913 as a stop for the Western Maryland Railway (WM). The building was operated as a passenger station until the WM ended service in 1959, and it continued to be used by the railway until 1976. It was subsequently restored and currently serves as a museum and offices, as well as the operating base for a heritage railway.
The Chesapeake Beach Railway (CBR), now defunct, was an American railroad of southern Maryland and Washington, D.C., built in the 19th century. The CBR ran 27.629 miles from Washington, D.C., on tracks formerly owned by the Southern Maryland Railroad and then on its own single track through Maryland farm country to a resort at Chesapeake Beach. The construction of the railway was overseen by Otto Mears, a Colorado railroad builder, who planned a shoreline resort with railroad service from Washington and Baltimore. It served Washington and Chesapeake Beach for almost 35 years, but the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile marked the end of the CBR. The last train left the station on April 15, 1935. Parts of the right-of-way are now used for roads and a future rail trail.
The Baltimore Terminal Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the U.S. state of Maryland. The line runs from Baltimore to Halethorpe along the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) line, one of the oldest rail lines in the United States and the first passenger railroad line. At its east (north) end, it connects with the Philadelphia Subdivision; its west (south) end has a junction with the Capital Subdivision and the Old Main Line Subdivision.
"Mount Winans" is a mixed-use residential, commercial and industrial neighborhood in the southwestern area of the City of Baltimore in Maryland. Its north, south and east boundaries are marked by the various lines of track of the CSX Railroad. In addition, Hollins Ferry Road running to the south towards suburban Baltimore County in the southwest and further connecting with adjacent Anne Arundel County to the southeast, draws its western boundary.
William Mason is a 4-4-0 steam locomotive currently on display at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It was built for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, carrying that railroad's number 25. The locomotive is named in honor of its builder, William Mason, who built around 754 steam locomotives at his Mason Machine Works firm in Taunton, Massachusetts, from 1853 until his death in 1883. The engine had been one of the oldest operable examples of the American Standard design, and is the fourth oldest Baltimore and Ohio locomotive in existence, the oldest being the 0-4-0 no. 2, the Andrew Jackson from 1836, second oldest is the no. 8 0-4-0, John Hancock built later that same year, and the third being the 0-8-0 no. 57, Memnon of 1848. While operable, William Mason had been one of the oldest operational locomotive in the world, and the oldest in the western hemisphere.
The Reading T-1 was a class of 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotives owned by the Reading Company. They were rebuilt from thirty "I-10sa" class 2-8-0 "Consolidation" type locomotives between 1945 and 1947. Out of the thirty rebuilt, four survive in preservation today, those being numbers 2100, 2101, 2102, and 2124.