Museum and Collection
Steamtown NHS is located within a working railroad yard and incorporates the surviving elements of the 1902 DL&W Scranton roundhouse and locomotive repair shops. The visitor center, theater, technology and history museums are built in the style of and on the site of the missing portions of the original roundhouse, giving an impression of what the original circular structure was like.
The museum has exhibits about the history and technology of steam railroads in the United States and Pennsylvania, particularly the DL&W; life on the railroad; and the business, labor, and governmental relationships between railroads. The theater shows a short film throughout the day.
Many locomotives and freight and passenger cars are on display. Some have open cabs and compartments that visitors can climb in and walk through, including a mail car, railroad executives' passenger car (with dining room and sleeping / lounge areas), a boxcar, two cabooses, and a recreated DL&W station with ticket window. A steam locomotive with cutaway sections helps visitors understand steam power. Part of one of the 1865 roundhouse inspection pits uncovered in archaeological excavations is also preserved in situ, under glass.
Some of the rolling stock is historically connected to the site, including a DL&W steam engine, caboose, boxcar, a former World War II troop sleeper that the DL&W converted to maintenance of way service, and numerous passenger cars. Former Oneida & Western/Rahway Valley Railroad 2-8-0 engine #15 was overhauled by the DL&W. Other noteworthy pieces are the popular Union Pacific Big Boy #4012, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP Rail) #2929 (a rare Jubilee 4-4-4), Nickel Plate Road (NKP) S-2 #759, and Reading Company (RDG) T-1 #2124.
Engines NKP #759 (which is rumored to be the next American engine to be rebuilt), Canadian National #47, New Haven Trap Rock Co. #43, and Rahway Valley #15 have operated at Steamtown, but not since the move to Pennsylvania.
Read more about this topic: Steamtown National Historic Site
Famous quotes containing the words museum and/or collection:
“A fallen tree does not rise again.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2412, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“The society would permit no books of fiction in its collection because the town fathers believed that fiction ‘worketh abomination and maketh a lie.’”
—For the State of Rhode Island, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)