(rshsdepot) Ellicott City, MD

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Museum rolls to celebration;
Railroading: Although the Fair of the Iron Horse is canceled in Baltimore,
the celebration of 175 years of America's first railroad will go on in
Ellicott City.

The Baltimore Sun
 March 24, 2003

When the roof of the B&O railroad roundhouse in Baltimore collapsed during
the snowstorm of 2003, so did plans to celebrate the 175th year of
railroading with the "Fair of the Iron Horse" - a six-day festival with a
parade of historic railroad equipment.
But while the downtown B&O Railroad Museum is shoring up its structure and
repairing its collection, the B&O Railroad Station Museum in Ellicott City
is rolling forward with its plans to celebrate the milestone.

The roundhouse damage "affects us, but we can still tell the story of 175
years of railroading," said Lisa A. Mason-Chaney, the station museum's
executive director.

The Ellicott City station's history is intimately tied to the birth of
railroads in Baltimore.

It is the nation's oldest railroad station; the first terminus of the first
commercial railroad built in America - constructed at the end of 13 miles of
track laid between Ellicott City and Baltimore.

When the construction of the C&O canal bypassed Baltimore, then the nation's
third-largest port, a group of businessmen built the railroad because they
didn't want to lose trade, Mason-Chaney said.

Horses drew the first cars and had to be changed after seven miles. Right at
the seven-mile mark is the town of Relay. It was named for its original
purpose and is home to the St. Denis, a MARC commuter railroad station.

This was high-speed travel at the time. "To us, it's kind of silly, but in
1827, if you could travel at 15 miles an hour, it was preposterous," said
Edward M. Williams, deputy director of the B&O Railroad Museum and former
director of the station museum.

For more than a century, the B&O carried passengers and freight to Ellicott
City. In the years after the station's completion, the community was a
popular tourist destination. "At first, it was used as a vacation resort
area," Mason-Chaney said.

Passenger service to the station ended in 1956, done in by an improved
highway network and the railroad's increasing concentration on its freight
business.

Freight trains continued to stop at the station until 1972, when a major
storm knocked out one of two lines of track through the Patapsco valley,
Mason-Chaney said.

CSX railroad, owner and operator of the rail line, wanted to tear down the
station, she said. But residents and business owners who had formed a
preservation organization called Historic Ellicott City stepped in to save
it.

They completed renovations of the building in 1976.
A new era

"We went into business after Tropical Storm Agnes," said Janet Kusterer,
president of Historic Ellicott City Inc., which oversees the museum.

The station has been closed in recent days for minor repairs but will reopen
Friday.

Exhibits in the station include a display on soldiers stationed in Ellicott
City during the Civil War and a model replica of the pioneering B&O line.

Planning and exhibit preparations are continuing for the celebration, which
will be held from June 27 to July 6.

Organizers plan to use volunteers to depict the Irish laborers who worked on
the railroad and lived in the area.

Exhibits will be open at nearby historical sites showing how the railroad
affected the development of Ellicott City, which was an important
manufacturing center beginning in the first half of the 19th century,
harnessing the swift waters of the Patapsco to run many textile and other
mills.

"Railroading history is so important," Mason-Chaney said. "It revolutionized
the history of America."

Planners hope the event will attract visitors to the Patapsco Female
Institute Historic Park, the Howard County Historical Society and other
nearby attractions.

Part of the ticket sales from the 10-day event will be donated to the B&O
roundhouse restoration fund, said Mason-Chaney. "We thought, 'If we
canceled, it wouldn't help them,'" Kusterer said.

It's unclear how long rebuilding will take at the Baltimore museum.

"We're still trying to get our arms around that," said Courtney B. Wilson,
executive director of the B&O Railroad Museum. "The weather slows us up
every inch of the way."
World's fair

The first Fair of the Iron Horse was staged in 1927 to celebrate the 100th
birthday of the B&O, the first long-distance commercial railroad.

More than 1 million visitors attended the event, which was held in
Halethorpe.

"The fair in 1927 was the biggest thing that the state had seen since
probably the signing of the Declaration of Independence," Williams said.

Many countries shipped their finest locomotives to display at the world's
fair of railroading, Williams said.

"They had great exhibition halls where they showed off the new technology of
the day," he said.

The exhibits also included historic railroad equipment, including the first
Pullman car, according to articles from The Sun.

The highlight of the event was a pageant with floats depicting the
development of transportation, according to the Short History of the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, published in 1937.

Company employees acted different roles, such as railroad passengers Samuel
Morse and Abraham Lincoln.

The 2003 fair was to have been the culmination of 16 months of events
celebrating railroading, and would have incorporated elements of the
original.

Williams said a pageant of more than 35 operating pieces would have been
paraded on tracks built for the event.

But the museum can have a fair anytime, Williams said.

"History is going to judge us now for every decision we make," Williams
said. "If we do not focus now on the museum and on its collection, history
will never forgive us."

Sun researcher Paul McCardell contributed to this article.


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #624
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org