A Collection Built to Last
In this photograph, Marty stands above rows of locomotives and railroad cars inside the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. From this elevated viewpoint, the size of the equipment, and the space needed to preserve it, becomes especially apparent. The museum holds more than 100 historic locomotives and railroad cars, many displayed within its approximately 100,000-square-foot exhibition hall, with additional equipment outdoors.
The collection did not arrive all at once. An important foundation was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s own historical collection of locomotives, passenger cars, and freight cars, formerly stored at Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Equipment preserved by the railroad eventually became the core of a public museum where visitors could examine it firsthand.
Pennsylvania authorized the museum in 1963 and selected Strasburg as its location in 1965. Acquisitions began during the mid-to-late 1960s, before the museum building was completed. In 1969, Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive No. 460 made its journey from Northumberland to Strasburg as part of a train of preserved locomotives. The equipment was coming together years before the museum opened its doors in April 1975.
Individual donations also helped build the collection. Bethlehem Steel’s fireless steam locomotive No. 111, for example, was still serviceable and serving as an emergency backup at its Bethlehem plant when it was donated. Other equipment survived through the intervention of railroad employees: the museum describes one locomotive that workers hid in an unused section of the Harrisburg roundhouse to prevent it from being scrapped. Such decisions helped preserve machinery that might otherwise have disappeared.
The museum’s scope extends beyond the Pennsylvania Railroad to equipment manufactured or operated throughout the state. Preserving this growing collection required more than acquiring trains. An exhibition hall expansion in 1995 provided additional indoor space, and a fully equipped restoration shop followed in 1999. Staff, volunteers, and the Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania have supported the continuing work of restoration and preservation.
Seen together, these locomotives and cars represent decades of collecting and careful stewardship. Each was once working equipment, built to carry passengers, move freight, or support railroad operations. Their presence here reflects the decisions of people who recognized that these machines deserved a future beyond their working lives.
