Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania stands at 300 Gap Road on PA Route 741 in Strasburg, Lancaster County, directly across the road from the operating Strasburg Rail Road. Administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with the support of the Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, it occupies an 18-acre site with roughly 100,000 square feet (9,300 square metres) under roof and holds more than 100 historic locomotives and railroad cars, many of them Pennsylvania Railroad equipment.

The collection began with a decision rather than a slow accumulation. For the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair the Pennsylvania Railroad displayed historic locomotives and cars it had gathered over the years; when the fair closed, the PRR kept the equipment and moved it to a roundhouse at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where its own employees looked after it. By the late 1960s the Commonwealth wanted a state railroad museum and PRR successor Penn Central wanted the collection off its books. The legislature created the museum in 1963, the state bought the Strasburg site in 1966, ground was broken in 1972, and the museum opened on 1 April 1975 under its first director, George Michener Hart. Rolling Stock Hall, the main display building, was enlarged from 45,000 to 100,000 square feet in June 1995.

The site is still growing. Ground was broken on 29 July 2025 for a 16,000-square-foot (1,490 square metre) roundhouse-style exhibit hall with six temperature-controlled stalls, built in brick, steel and glass under a clerestory roof; completion is expected in late 2026 or early 2027. Six Pennsylvania Railroad steam locomotives that have stood outdoors for years are slated to move inside it: M1b No. 6755 (4-8-2, 1930), K4s No. 3750 (4-6-2, 1920), L1s No. 520 (Baldwin 2-8-2, 1916), E6s No. 460 (4-4-2, 1914), H10s No. 7688 (Lima 2-8-0, 1915) and B6sb No. 1670 (0-6-0 switcher, 1916).

Rolling Stock Hall is lit by rows of skylights, and that is what makes handheld interior work practical here: the newest section of the building is bright enough that most visitors come away with usable frames without a tripod. A wide-angle lens earns its place, because the hall's parallel tracks put full-length locomotives close to the aisle and there is rarely room to back up.

The elevated walkway and observation bridge on the second floor give the one frame the ground floor cannot - the whole hall at once, rows of boilers and car roofs receding into the distance. Go up before working the floor, so you know what is parked where. Flash is prohibited in parts of the building, notably the second-floor art gallery, and signs mark those areas; the museum also reserves the right to restrict tripods, external lighting and flash inside locomotives and cars.

Outside, the yard gives you natural light, sky and real weather on the equipment - the opposite problem from indoors, and the only place to shoot the six locomotives still awaiting the roundhouse. Drones are prohibited anywhere on museum property without written approval from the director. Any staged shoot - wedding, graduation, family portrait - needs advance approval and a signed Location Release Form, and everyone appearing in the photographs pays admission. Climbing on equipment for a picture is not allowed unless that piece is explicitly open.

The most photographed machine here is GG-1 No. 4935, built in 1943 by the Pennsylvania Railroad's Juniata Shops with General Electric and restored in 1977 to its 1943 appearance. It sits on indoor static display in Rolling Stock Hall, where the aisle puts you close enough to read the rivet lines on Raymond Loewy's welded carbody. Beside it the museum keeps the PRR's own definition of passenger power: K4s No. 3750, a 4-6-2 turned out by Juniata Shops in 1920, and E7s No. 7002, a 1902 Juniata product credited by the railroad with a 127.1 mph run on 12 June 1905.

Older and rarer material sits alongside. D16sb No. 1223, a 1905 Juniata "American" type, appeared in films including Hello, Dolly!. The working John Bull replica - locomotive built 1940, tender 1927, both at PRR Altoona - reproduces the Camden and Amboy machine of the 1830s. The Philadelphia and Reading Railway's Rocket, built in 1838 by Braithwaite, Milner and Company of London, arrived from the Franklin Institute in August 2023. Virginia and Truckee No. 20 Tahoe, a Baldwin Mogul of 1875, brings Nevada's Comstock-era railroading a continent east.

Freight and passenger cars are not an afterthought. PRR class GL hopper No. 33164, built in 1898 by the Schoen Pressed Steel Company at McKees Rocks, is the earliest all-steel Pennsylvania Railroad freight car in existence. The Pullman sleeping-lounge car Lotos Club of 1913 and Western Maryland business car No. 203 of 1914 show the other end of the train. And for anyone who wants to see operating steam the same afternoon, the Strasburg Rail Road runs from the far side of Route 741.

Most of the visit happens under one roof. Rolling Stock Hall is a single 100,000-square-foot floor with locomotives and cars parked on parallel tracks, several fitted with stairs or ramps so you can climb aboard; which pieces are open changes day to day depending on staffing. A second-floor gallery holds changing exhibits, and an observation bridge runs above the hall. Stewart Junction is the hands-on education area aimed at younger visitors, while the library, archives and the restoration and paint shop occupy separate spaces, with restoration-shop tours offered on some days rather than continuously.

Plan on two to three hours; anyone who reads every interpretive panel and then works the outdoor yard should allow longer. The museum opens Wednesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 16:00 and Sunday from 12:00 to 16:00, with last entry at 15:30, and closes Mondays, Tuesdays and ten public holidays across the year. Weekday mornings outside the summer school break are quietest; Saturdays and school holidays fill up, partly because most visitors pair the museum with a Strasburg Rail Road train across the road.

An outdoor yard holds equipment awaiting restoration or display space - it is where the six locomotives destined for the new roundhouse have been standing. Ticketing is at the front desk in the lobby, there is a museum shop, and at $10 for an adult the admission is modest by American museum standards.