(The Asbury Park Press posted the following article on its website on September 25.)
BALTIMORE, Md. — One snowy night in February 2003, Steve Johnson, facilities director for Baltimore’s B&O Railroad Museum, heard an alarm go off.
In the dark, he investigated and saw water pouring out of the building. He turned off the sprinkler system and gas and went home.
The next day, he saw that the 135-foot high, acre-wide roof of the museum’s 1884 roundhouse — one of only two roofed roundhouses in the world — had collapsed. It caused $30 million in damage to the building, its turntable and a priceless collection of “the first, the last, the best and the only” locomotives and train cars from railroad history.
The B&O Museum reopened in May with a new roof and new features, including model trains with buttons for kids to push, a restoration facility, where equipment is repaired, and regular train rides along the first commercial mile of track in the country.