Railroad Museum Of Pennsylvania

A guidebook to the museum in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, covering the history of the state's railroad industry, with a tour of the 100,000-square-foot exhibit hall, which displays dozens of historic locomotives and rolling stock significant to Pennsylvania's railroad heritage. A complete checklist of the museum's collection of rolling stock is included.

A colorful souvenir photo book that captures the history and excitement of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, which has preserved and interpreted the Commonwealth's rich railroad history for half a century.

When the Strasburg Rail Road was chartered in 1832, no one anticipated the myriad of obstacles the short line would encounter. What began as an afterthought in the early 19th century eventually became one of America's premier steam train excursions and the most visited heritage railroad in the continental United States. By 1957, the declining condition of its rails and the lack of freight and passenger service seemed to mark the end of the railroad, but it was given new life in 1958, and not even the wildest imagination foresaw the remarkable transformation and development this "Methuselah of railroads" would undergo. This book chronicles the unlikely success of America's oldest continuously operating railroad. Explore how and why Strasburg's four-and-a-half-mile line survived, and discover the story behind its ascension to prominence as an iconic, internationally known, small-town steam railroad.

Great Railroad Museums of the USA is a guide for the devoted railfan. It details the sixty-seven largest, most interesting and most important railroad museums in the country, which are classified into good, really good, great and really great groups. Individually the museums are discussed and highlights of their collections are listed. All are rated on their size, the rarity and antiquity of their collections, the quality of their work, the scope of their collections and their presentation to the public. The book is indexed and a map shows the museum's geographic locations. A special index lists more than a hundred-sixty especially interesting cars and locomotives and describes where they can be found; ninety photographs provide illustration. Bonus chapters list and describe the six best museum rail rides in the country and nineteen instances of significant rail preservation outside of traditional railroad museums.

This account of a doomed enterprise is “an important contribution to both rail and road history, as well as to business history”—photos and maps included (The Lexington Quarterly). Stretching over two hundred miles through Pennsylvania’s most challenging mountain terrain, the South Pennsylvania Railroad would form the heart of a new trunk line, from the East Coast to Pittsburgh and the Midwest. Conceived in 1881 by William H. Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and a group of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia industrialists, it was intended to break the rival Pennsylvania Railroad’s near-monopoly in the region. But the line was within a year of opening when J.P. Morgan brokered a peace treaty that aborted the project and helped bolster his position in the world of finance. The railroad right of way and its tunnels would sit idle for sixty years—before coming to life in the late 1930s as the original section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Based on original letters, documents, diaries, and newspaper reports, The Railroad That Never Was uncovers the truth behind this mysterious railway, one of the most infamous construction projects of the late nineteenth century.

Fifty years ago the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission chose Strasburg, Pennsylvania as the site for its new railroad museum. The small town, situated in Lancaster County was, and remains, a major tourist destination with its farms, the Amish, and the Strasburg Rail Road. Since its opening in 1975, the museum has been a popular attraction ever since. Thousands of visitors come every year to see its remarkable world class collection of more than one hundred pieces of rolling stock including locomotives, passenger and freight cars and unique pieces of equipment. There are representatives of the earliest steam locomotives and passenger cars in the nation right up to more modern equipment that has been recently retired from service. The Museum is also home to an important archives of railroad materials including photographs, books, railroad history and artifacts. The collection includes materials on the railroads that were active in Pennsylvania. There are interactive exhibits, videos, model train boards, regular programs and events for a variety of interests and expertise. Visitors can climb up into steam and diesel locomotives and passenger coaches. Find out why this museum is called the flagship of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's collection of historic sites and museums.