G's Baltimore Adventure - Choo Choo! - Visiting the B & O Railroad Museum

[Composed 9/21/2024]

After a morning on the water, we made our way in-land to the B&O Railroad Museum. Between memories of admiring freight trains passing behind my grandparent's home in Chicago to a crude, but beloved model train setup in our basement when I was a kid, I've got more than a soft spot for trains. Fortunately, G shares the same love.

We visited the museum in the afternoon and didn't have a ton of time. But still, we climbed aboard and 'drove' every train we could. We marveled at engines of every size and time period, from decorative horse drawn affairs to towering diesel-electric monsters.

Touring the #C-2222 Bobber Caboose, aka, a little red caboose was a special treat. Inside we found a tiny house on wheels, serving as the crew's bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and office. G climbed up to the elevated bench seats and for the 1000th time that day, announced 'all aboard!' He's a natural! The little space was a study in efficiency and functionality.

Stepping into a C&O #725 Pullman passenger car, once lauded as "the most luxurious coach type cars that have ever been operated on the railroad," we were met with a most impressive sight: an HO scale model of the first B&O mainline. You can get a preview of model in action here. We loved admiring the details of the model, from the paths the different trains took, to the little vignettes of life along the tracks.

The grounds of the museum are so large, that we barely had time to put our eyes on most of the collection. In what felt like no time, the museum's 4pm closing time was upon us and we had to call it a day.

I'm definitely ready to go back and explore the museum in more detail. Next time I go, I'll have the museum's searchable catalog queued up on my phone, ready to go. I've been impressed that with just a few details, I'm able to pull up a whole story about an item in the museum's collection.

For example, consider this photo of us in front of this epic yellow engine:

Searching for 490 in the museum's catalog quickly brought me to this page, describing the C&O #490 Hudson. Despite its new age look, this bad boy is a steam engine built in 1926! It hauled passenger trains until 1953. So cool.

I'm pretty sure Shira's not going to have the patience for this level of Train Geekery, but a guy can dream.

Leaving the museum we headed back to DC where we dropped off a very, very tired G to his parents. We'd had an amazing adventure these last two days. I'm not quite sure how we're going to top this, but we're certainly going to try!