Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, Part I

While traveling on business last week, I had an opportunity to pay a quick visit to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg. This is one of the few state-owned railroad museums in the country, and as such has benefited from infusions of government money to promote capital projects. Most notably, it more closely follows the "professional" museum model of having a smaller collection of very well presented artifacts in a setting designed for viewing, with unrestored equipment kept out of the main museum (though still accessible in their outdoor lot).

The indoor portion of the museum includes, in addition to some model railroads and display cases with railroad artifacts, a large display hall four tracks wide with ample space between tracks. There is an overhead walkway from which all of the trains in the hall can be viewed. Some of the equipment is arranged in realistic trains; in the photo to the left, a pre-1950 freight train is at far left, with a 1920's passenger train beside it, a short hopper car train in the left foreground and a c1900 passenger train on the right.

The museum has some extremely historic equipment on display. Below left is a replica of the "John Bull" followed by one of the oldest preserved railway passenger cars, Camden & Amboy coach 3, built in 1836 and on loan from the Smithsonian. Below right is PRR 7002, the famous E2 Atlantic that operated as recently as the 1980's.


Among the trains in the main museum shed are several very interesting displays, shown below. Clockwise from top left: an exhibit showing ice blocks being loaded into a reefer by mannequins; a position light signal that can be operated by visitors; a below-ground pit for visitors to walk into to see the underside of a steam engine; and a locomotive simulator donated by Norfolk Southern that seemed especially popular.




























Next up: a trip to the "out back" sections of the museum!