Planes, Trains and Automobiles

With the countdown to Christmas officially on, I am sure many people will be using at least one of the above modes of transportation to visit friends and families.  With nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon I figured I would check another thing off my Baltimore Bucket List and visit the B&O Railway Museum.  Tickets were also discounted if you brought in a book for charity so it was a win-win situation.

The B&O Railroad first laid track in 1829 which lead to the first commercial long-distance track.  While it was not the first railway in the US, it did have have a lot of firsts in the industry: the first to hire a publicity agency, having the newest and most powerful trains of the time, creating full sized wooden replicas for documentation purposes.

Little know fact (at least to me), the first railway cars were pulled by horses. 

After World War II ended, the US created friendship trains which crossed the country and collected supplies and food for French citizens.  As a thank you, the French sent 49 antique "Merci Trains" which were filled with french wine, art and family heirlooms.  A train was sent to each state and DC shared one with Hawaii.

No train museum is complete without miniature tracks and landscapes.  While the B&O Railway museums had both indoor and outdoor tracks, they were nothing compared to those in the Carnegie Science Museum.