My first visit to the magnificent Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum was in August of 1994, which happened to be the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. That was also the summer of my engagement to my college sweetheart. After my summer job was over, but before school started again in the fall, my father picked me up in Bristol, Tennessee, and we drove to Richmond to see my fiancee and future in-laws. After a wonderful visit there, we headed north on a week-long railfan safari through eastern Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania. The first stop: the amazing B&O museum. The collection was and remains an incredible assemblage of 19th and early 20th century equipment. The roundhouse interior collection was worth the visit alone, and our stop there was 10 years before the now-famous winter roof collapse. Growing up as a kid loving trains, you read about the Tom Thumb and the Lafayette and that whole cast of early steam-making characters that launched this wild mode of transportation on our continent. But to see the little beasts in person, or at least some of their replicas, is a treat at any age. Standing next to one of those early kettles, it is not too hard to imagine them bouncing and clanking their way down what must have been some terrible trackage. What a ride that must have been! All in all, we spent an entire day on the Baltimore site -- like a visit to the motherland. Yet despite all that colonial American technology, I actually think my dad's favorite item on the property was the eccentric WWII-era Maryland & Pennsylvania converted track inspection car, pictured below. The old man was always a sucker for a vintage automobile set to rails. As for me, I fell in love with this Central of New Jersey boxcab switcher -- hustle muscle, back in the earliest days of the diesel-electric.

My second visit to the BORM was in 2000 when my wife and I took a week-long camping trip through Maryland, including a day in Baltimore. But my third visit to the site saw our siblings in tow. We came to Baltimore for a surprise birthday weekend to celebrate my brother-in-law Will turning 40. Will and I share a love of trains, so of course I did my duty as a brother-in-law and suggested to the women that a few hours at the Museum would be in order. The place did not disappoint, again. It was good to be back there since the rebuilding effort after the roof collapse in 2003. The turntable collection looks better than ever, and I enjoyed seeing the new shop building where finally the more modern steamers get a roof over their heads. Since Will and family live in the southwest Virginia, northeastern Tennessee region, perhaps it was fitting that we posed as a family in front of little Clinchfield #1. It was fun to sit in her cab again, pointing out the shop-made controls for that trailing B-unit that made all those mountain Christmas trains possible.

Whenever I find some Western Maryland equipment -- mostly in museums now -- I always snap a pic and send it to my dear friend Mark Y, a proud native son of Garrett County, Maryland, on the western end of the state. Mark loves his home state, and it is easy for me to see why. Maryland is a lovely slice of ground, and I've enjoyed getting to know the route of the former WM over my years in the mid-Atlantic region. It is not hard to imagine a trio of these RS3s grinding away at the grade up to Frostburg, coal drag in tow. The Western M was one of those regional roads with a lot of local character, plus some mountain-hauling grit. I would have liked to have seen the road in its heyday.