Can someone out there elaborate on what this message means, it was posted on another board, and while interesting, is rather vague to say the least.

B&O Museum Repairs Expose Previously Unnoticed Flaws
Author: TO News from Press Reports
A huge snowstorm in February did more than topple the roof at the B&O Railroad roundhouse. It also exposed design and material flaws that had survived apparently unnoticed for 119 years.

"The evidence was very clear, very quickly," said William Rockey, a vice president of Century Engineering, a Towson firm in charge of rebuilding the structure.

The design problem isn't complicated, according to an internal report obtained by The (Baltimore) Sun. But the problems in the lower roof have also shown up in the undamaged, smaller upper roof.

The museum was expected to be closed until early next year. Redoing the upper roof could now push back the museum's reopening to late spring or early summer.

Insurance covering the museum's operating costs while it is closed, including salaries for the 49 full- and part-time workers, expires Feb. 16. The museum will have to raise an additional $1.7 million to cover the unexpected cost of the upper roof and raise funds to pay staff and avoid layoffs.

"It's just a whole different problem that we didn't see coming," said Courtney Wilson, the museum's executive director.

Wilson took over as executive director in 2000 and had planned for the past summer to be the museum's brightest moment. He was organizing the Fair of the Iron Horse, billed as the largest-ever festival of locomotives and rail yard history in North America.

Rail vehicles from as far away as California were to participate in the fair, capping the museum's 16-month celebration of the 175th anniversary of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The collapse of the roof forced cancellation of the fair. The B&O was left shuttered and trying to salvage its own collection, much of it damaged in the collapse and not expected to be completely repaired for at least six years.

The museum, opened in 1953, is at the site of Mount Clare, the first train station in the United States. The roundhouse was formerly a train car repair shop. The B&O has several buildings, but can't function without the roundhouse, which is the primary viewing area for visitors.

Insurance will cover the estimated $10 million cost of repairing the lower roof.

Design and material problems that left the roundhouse vulnerable escaped notice for years.

"Since it has been a museum, to my knowledge, there's been no structural analysis of the building," Wilson said. "No one ever informed museum officials the roof could be a problem."

> Can someone out there elaborate on what this
> message means, it was posted on another
> board, and while interesting, is rather
> vague to say the least.

My take on this is:
Engineering and material knowledge has changed in the last 150 years. Also the building and its roof has lasted much longer than any of the original builders ever expected.

Repeated loading on the roof structure (frame) from snow or wind has undoubtedly set up stresses within the frame that modern engineering probably would consider and provide allowances for. The final snow loading caused a frame member to fail and overload the adjacent one that in turns fails. Nowdays the various members and the connections would have been made to withstand such loadings.

Engineering learns through failures. You never look at why a building stays up; but rather you look at why a building falls down.

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

> Can someone out there elaborate on what this
> message means, it was posted on another
> board, and while interesting, is rather
> vague to say the least.

Gladly.

The Baltimore Sun had an article (see Flimsies) that detailed the damage in the Feb. 17, 2003 collapse. The new information is that the same mettalurgical and structural flaws that led to the collapse of the lower-level roof have been discovered in the upper-level (cupola) roof, and it, too, will have to be replaced. This should push back the reopening of the Museum to late spring to mid-summer 2004.

Questions?

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net