The Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum

On the afternoon of our vacation’s eighth day, we drove to Maryland, which was another new state for the boys (#13). In Hagerstown, we visited the Roundhouse Museum. Built in 1939, this 25 stall roundhouse and shops were the major facility for maintenance and repairs of Western Maryland’s locomotives and cars. Unfortunately the Roundhouse facility was demolished in 1999. Museum volunteers constructed a large scaled model of the Roundhouse facility and the surrounding area as it may have looked in the 1950’s. The boys loved watching the multiple model trains passing as they circled the mock-up. Outside, we found a trolley car, a diesel engine and four more cabooses. A brochure at the counter promoted the Hagerstown Railroad Museum in the Park a few miles away.  While that museum had already closed for the day, we were able to see seven more cabooses and run around in the park.