Location: North Car Shop

The North Car Shop was built to house the Baltimore and Ohio Passenger Car Works during the years 1869-1871, and was previously used for the construction, repair, and painting of B&O railway passenger cars. The building itself is perhaps the oldest surviving railroad manufacturing building in the world. The North Car Shop is now home to a collection of rolling stock and locomotives that represent the dieselization of the American railways following the height of steam-powered engines, and their subsequent decline in popularity succeeding the introduction of the automobile and air travel. From among the last of the great steamers, like the B&O No. 5300 President Washington, the modernist stream-lined C&O No. 490 Hudson, and the first government-built locomotive, the B&O No. 4500 Mikado, the North Car Shop Collection shows the innovations made in railway equipment to compete with Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System and the introduction of commercial airlines. The collection also includes the CNJ No. 1000, the first commercially successful diesel-electric locomotive which ran on the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and the B&O No. 51, the first streamlined diesel-electric engine that was designed to promote the B&O as a modern form of passenger transportation. Visitors can also enter the cab of the gigantic Allegheny engine and take a first-hand look at the complex controls of operating a locomotive. 

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Janet F.
Morgantown, WV

As you moved through the roundhouse it felt like you were following a cohesive storyline through the early history of the railroad.

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