I would invite those planning a display building for trolleys (or for that matter, any rolling stock) to visit Pennsylvania Trolley Museum's 2004 vintage display building. The building is 75x350' and houses 30 trolleys. It has 4 tracks, spaced to provide two very wide aisles for ease of viewing the cars. Another important factor is lighting bright enough to allow photography without having to resort to flash. The building is also fully protected by sprinklers using a dry pipe system and has a comprehensive security system.

There is a guided public tour of the building scheduled at 1:30PM each day that the museum is open, which is Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Monday through the end of the year. Visit the museum's website at www.pa-trolley.org for full details.

Dave,

What you have there is the state of the art car barn at this time. The museums are still building to a wide range of designs due to money available and local buildings codes.

At the Western Railway Museum the Jensen Memorial Car Barn, we have a nicely designed building that has paved walkways in lieu of a complete floor and the museum's pit track is in the shop rather than the Display Building.

We give tours of the the building, but do not charge extra for them as you do.

The new building going up at the illinois Railway Museum is a simple pole barn, that seems to be all they need at that museum in the corn fields of Illinois.

The Connecticut Trolley Museum has a Visitor Center that also acts as a display barn with several cars on display in there.

Like I said it takes all kinds of buildings; but the important thing is that more and more museums are getting their collections out of the weather!

This is especially important for lightly built street railway equipment.

Ted Miles

Just visited the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum for the first time this weekend. Was impressed by their equipment display, operation and trackage, also the size of their storage building, which unfortunately I did not have time to take the tour of. Good to know they have so much of their equipment under cover. Now I have to catch up with the National Capital Trolley site again.