Health & Fitness
Baltimore Streetcar Museum
Baltimore Streetcar Museum provides an interesting history not only about electric railcar usage in the city but about the way public transportation developed and suburbs grew about the urban core.
Visiting the Baltimore Streetcar Museum is an entertaining way to spend a few hours. It can also be a thought-provoking experience leading one to ponder what the future may hold for public transportation in the metropolitan area.
There was a time before we actually had public transportation to get around the city, when everybody walked to work and only the wealthy could afford conveyances like private horse-pulled hackneys. As the city expanded and invention progressed, it became possible, practical and politically expedient to provide a means by which the population could move about more easily.
By the 1850s tracks were being laid down upon which horse-powered cars could navigate the streets of Baltimore. They were followed by electric railcars. Masses of people could, by then, commute longer distances from home to work, visit city parks and spend a day at the beach. Suburbs developed in every direction as rails not only criss-crossed but expanded the city.
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At the Baltimore Streetcar Museum (BSM) are cars to ride, videos to watch, photos to see and much rich history to read as well as things to buy, like t-shirts and postcards and books like the one I bought and am in the middle of reading now, called Who Made All Our Streetcars Go: The Story of Rail Transit in Baltimore by Micahel R. Farrell.
Mass production of automobiles changed the direction of transportation. Electric streetcars were replaced by buses, though we do now have a subway system and limited light rail service. Hybrids and electric cars may reduce our use of gas. Clean green technology may someday be required to insure air pollution is reduced. I am not a visionary! While it sounds like fun to suggest we may all someday discover how to fly or learn how to transpost ourselves from one place to another, public means of transportation will likely still be with us in some form or another.
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The BSM is located along Falls Road close to where the Jones Falls disappears beneath the North Avenue Viaduct and Howard Street Bridge near where the Ma and Pa Railroad used to have a roundhouse. Go to www.baltimorestreetcar.org for more information or call 410-547-0264 to plan your visit.