Baltimore Streetcar Museum looks to grow

The tantalizing dream of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum is set to expand its rail kingdom within the Jones Falls Valley.

Located on Falls Road in the watery hollow between Remington, Hampden, Druid Hill Park and Reservoir Hill, the museum recently engaged Baltimore’s Ziger/Snead Architects and other consultants on how it could take over the former Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad’s 1910 stone roundhouse, a building that for the past 65 years held the salt that got scattered on Baltimore’s streets in the winter.

“We’ve been thinking about this expansion for 20 years. But the city was still using it for its trucks. But now the city is ready to divest itself of the building and it’s time to act,” said John O’Neill, the streetcar museum president.

“We’d like to lease the property for at least 50 years,” he said.

It’s a daunting endeavor — and may cost $25 million to $30 million for a thorough overhaul and partial rebuild of the roundhouse that once held the Ma & Pa Railroad’s fleet of steam locomotives. There would be new tracks, rail turning loops and a new car house, or car barn — a term that echoes the days when Baltimore used brawn horses to pull wheeled vehicles.

“I get more calls from people asking if anything can be done to save the roundhouse — more calls than any other building in the city,” said Johns Hopkins, director of Baltimore Heritage, a preservation advocacy group.

When the museum arrived on Falls Road in 1966, it had not much more than an inventory of aging rail vehicles with bum motors and enthusiasts with big ideas. It was all volunteers with no paid staff. Against the odds, it worked — wire got strung, rails got laid and enthusiasts found an outlet.

And after 59 years, the institution acknowledges its need to rethink its operation by acquiring adjacent space.

“You can’t put a value on our collection because it’s priceless,” O’Neill said. “Baltimore is unique because we have so many vehicles that operate in our home city. We have an example of just about every car that ever operated here.”

As the value and worth of the collection have come to attention, the museum realizes its liability — it is located within the Jones Falls floodway.

“It’s actually worse than being in a floodplain,” O’Neill said. “Should the Jones Falls flood and breach its banks, as it did in 1979, after Hurricane David, we had three or four feet of water in the carhouse.”

The envisioned new location would be on somewhat higher ground — the museum will have to raise the level of the roundhouse floor to ensure that its decidedly antique 19 cars would be out of danger.

The current plans also envision the reuse of the iron Lombard Street Bridge, a span whose skeletal frame now sits in the weeds along Falls Road.

There would also be a new carhouse, or car barn, for the somewhat newer (1940s) operating cars that tell the story of mass transit in Baltimore.

“This expansion is our future,” said Matthew Nawn, the museum’s development director. “This is the way we need to transform to be relevant. It will be a place to become part of Baltimore’s future. We started out being a place where you took a trolley ride and we saved the cars from the junkyard. But we are past that now. We need to be current for future generations.

“We need space to educate and walk people through the history of public transportation in Baltimore,” Nawn said.

The museum’s success is its partial undoing. Cars from Philadelphia (including a mighty snow sweeper), San Diego and Newark arrived and were folded into the collection, creating a storage issue.

“Our main collection is crammed into a little building that is not conducive to fulfilling our educational mission,” Nawn said.

“We are calling this our new campus, centered around the roundhouse. We need the space to fulfill our mission, in addition to getting out of the floodway,” Nawn said.

The museum acknowledges the vision of Edward M. Amrhein, a Rosedale-based master plumber and museum stalwart, who died last year. “Ed kept saying, we need to do this,” said Nawn.

The roundhouse envisioned as the expansion centerpiece is a 1910 substantial stone building. The old Ma & Pa Railroad thrived in the 1900s and 1910s, providing regular commuter service between York, Bel Air, Fallston and Baltimore. It hauled milk and mail between the cities and farm communities. In 1960, Baltimore City bought the roundhouse and the terminal complex. The area was then used — and continues — as a place for heavy equipment and winter road salt storage.

A few Public Works vehicles still arrive and depart from the badly neglected facility, which has suffered a partially collapsed roof.

There are no more milk trains, but city trucks haul asphalt to fill potholes.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at [e-mail] and 410-332-6570.