Today’s (3/23/2025) Baltimore Sun has an article regarding Baltimore Streetcar Museum’s planned new campus centered around the former Maryland & Pennsylvania Roundhouse.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/2025/03/22 ... s-to-grow/

Sincerely,
Matt Nawn

Congrats, Matt! Hope to get down there soon.

The roundhouse in question is the Maryland and Pennsylvania (MPA) roundhouse at the far end of BSM operation. MPA ran from Baltimore to York Pa, with a fleet of ancient small steam engines and a couple medium-sized 2-8-0's. They dieselized with EMD shifters.

BSM uses the MPA right of way along the Jones Falls in Baltimore City.

Phil Mulligan

A bit of context here:

When the Ma & Pa retreated from Maryland in June 1958, the City of Baltimore acquired the entire right-of-way within its city limits. This included the property that later became the Baltimore Streetcar Museum and its newly-built car barn and visitors center, along with the freight warehouse depot along Falls Road (now the BSM mechanical shop), the roundhouse, the tunnel under 29th Street, and the right of way stretching up through Wyman Park and past Johns Hopkins University and Loyola University and two exclusive private schools, portions of which are now "preserved" as the "Stony Run Walking Path," a conscientious decision by local activists not to improve it to a "rail-trail" with paving and bicycles. In the subsequent decades, the City has used much of the right-of-way and the tunnel to construct portions of the city's storm drainage, sewer, water, and other utility networks, in part to relieve pressure on Stony Run and the Jones Falls (the name of a waterway, not a waterfall) on storm drainage. The Homeland station on Lake Avenue near the city's northern border survives today as a private residence; I think the Ma & Pa sold it before their retreat.

The roundhouse was quickly adapted by the City for storage of road salt and city trucks, thanks in part to its somewhat centralized location. The BSM, which had formed from a faction that had splintered off the group that later became the National Capital Trolley Museum (or maybe the other way around, depending on who's telling the story!), eventually relocated its "campus" from Lake Roland (scenic but difficult to access) to the Ma & Pa right of way along Falls Road, leased from the City for $1 annually.

The City continued to use the Roundhouse for decades as a salt barn. Rail preservationists from both the railroad and traction sides have long eyed the potential of the roundhouse as both a display center for the BSM and a Ma & Pa "shrine"/museum, as there exists quite a bit of overlap between BSM and Ma&Pa fanaticism for obvious reasons. But the turntable is long gone, and dumping salt in a steel-framed stone structure is not good for long-term survival.

The City was eventually ordered by the EPA to cease using the location due to its lack of protective barriers and seepage into the Jones Falls (which reaches the Inner Harbor/Chesapeake Bay two miles downstream). It took forever and several more years for the City to both find and construct an acceptable alternative location (or three), and even before ceasing use of the roundhouse completely, City officials offered to turn over the Roundhouse to the BSM either free and clear or as part of their annual lease (I've been told both). The BSM, in their wisdom, saw it as an attempted dodge by the City to free themselves of massive remediation and clean-up needed for the property--not just salt, but hydraulic fluid, diesel fuel, gasoline, battery acid, and who knows what else spilled on the site over 50+ years and even in railroad days, and balked at the initial offer--while continuing negotiations and drawing up plans for adaptive reuse of the site.

The primary driver of the project, as cited in the article, is to find a new storage and shop location above the flood plain of the Jones Falls--the current car barn at the south end has had flooding in it at least twice, and by now any time high water is forecast a flood wall of ballast is dumped across the front of the car barn's upper doors. My understanding is that the current Visitors Center (constructed and owned by the City) will remain in use, and the current car barn may be scaled back to shop and storage space, with the "jewels" of the collection displayed in the Roundhouse and/or operated out of the new car barn. (The BSM also owns a couple historic City buses not stored on site.)

It had been part of the dream of the late VP of Operations Edward Amrhein to include a piece of MPA rolling stock in the roundhouse for display--among the leads he was supposedly pursuing was a former MPA diesel still extant down at Tradepoint Rail, the former Patapsco & Back Rivers RR down at the Sparrows Point Bethlehem Steel plant (either SW1 70 or NW2 80, I can't remember which).

The article references The turning loop being moved, Any idea why they would do so?
And, The Lombard Street bridge, I'd heard as a kid was supposed to be used to cross the Jones Falls, but Army corp engineers didn't allow it.
But it looks like it was supposed to be put in over Glynns Falls, in Dickeysville. Anyone know the story, and what it will be use for?

It's nice to see this finally becoming a reality, although corrision of the building from salt, and as noted other harmful substances has taken its toll on the property. I remember seeing a civil engineering plan for this area being done by a large Baltimore-area engineering firm around 2007 with an eye towards BSM eventually getting the property.

I'm curious to see how they plan to utilize laying track into the roundhouse that aligns with their streetcar and interurban fleet operation. The turntable is gone, but the building wasn't designed for the type of use one thinks of when it comes to traction.

I was also wondering how they are going to get the tracks in there. Are they going to raise the level of the connecting BSM mainline, to connect to it?
And, does this mean BSM is giving up on the ex MAPA freight house?

Best i know the freight house will still be used as a machine shop and parts storage. From what i've seen in the museums "Live Wire" members news letter is that most stalls of the round house will house a given car. A turntable will be built to replace the missing original.
How they will do the overhead to get cars in and out i have no idea. It will be a piece of very complicated wiring i guess somewhat how the wiring on Amtrak's NEC swing bridges work but with more wires. The only other way i can see them doing it is to have no wire in the round house or the turntable and have a small motor car or small locomotive pull the cars in and out of the round house to wired trackage.

I reviewed the PBR roster in The Patapsco and Back Rivers Railroad by Elmer J. Hall as well as the current five-locomotive roster of Tradepoint Rail and couldn't find any mention of a former MPA locomotive. Was it part of the PBR roster or did it just happen to be there for some unstated reason, and have there been any recent sightings of it?

For easy reference, here's an online PBR roster:

https://www.dieselshop.us/PBR.HTML

The locomotive would have to be gauged for Baltimore 5'4" gauge. Or they use dual gauge trackage.

I took photos in China in 1987 of an industrial electric operation (I think the Fushun open pit coal mine), with a roundhouse for electrics that had overhead wires radiating from the turntable, so it's possible, not easy or cheap.

The original plans/proposals I saw for the roundhouse ages ago did NOT specify a turntable, for a couple reasons: The complexity of overhead wiring; the mentality that cars on display would NOT be routinely operating in and out but on long-term display (the horse car for example, and cars most folks don't even know about because they have yet to return to operation); the cost of a turntable; and the historical record of long-ago traction companies losing large numbers of cars to a roundhouse fire.

The proposals I saw more closely resembled what a model railroader would do with a roundhouse sans turntable: a web of tracks with crossings serving some stalls but not all. Large portions of the roundhouse without active stalls would have cars semi-permanently plinthed on display along with a bus or two and interpretive displays. Remember, again, that operable cars in service would be in an adjacent car barn, NOT run in and out of the roundhouse every weekend.
Now, it's possible someone finally priced custom-made crossing rails/frogs for that proposal and found a turntable might be cheaper...............

With now something of a surplus of operable equipment, including the three NJT and Philly PCCs and the San Diego/El Paso PCC being kitbashed into a wheelchair-accessible PCC, I would have no qualms with the "jewels" of the fleet, such as BTCo PCC 7407, retired to display except for special occasions.

Another point to be mentioned: There is a two-story office building next to/attached to the roundhouse, which would be converted to accessible archives and shop space, hopefully with an elevator installed or attached. The plan would be to relocate the Maryland Rail Heritage Library and shop archives, currently in the non-ADA-accessible upstairs of the Visitors Center and in sore need of additional space, once again to a location above the flood threat and with windows. I believe the current Visitors Center would remain as such, with interpretive displays and the gift/book shop.

I believe in the case of the late Ed Amrhein it's a case of getting some wires crossed. MPA 70 and 80 both went to a steel mill, but it was Republic Steel in Ohio. The numbers assigned to them by Republic don't align with anything on the online diesel shop roster site.

MPA Diesel Roster with history:
https://www.maparailroadhist.org/diesel.html

Here's a RYPN Thread from <gulp> 2003 talking about BSM getting the MPA Roundhouse in Baltimore then.
https://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6879

Ok, so the Roundhouse will be used the way the B&O museum uses theirs, for protected display of not often operational gear. The trolley bus could finally see the light of day.
What is this ADA compliant PCC they are building?

The last 2-3 museum newsletters have photos of the Roundhouse and various renderings.

https://baltimorestreetcarmuseum.org/news/