Railroaders Memorial Museum

Altoona exists because of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The company laid out the town in 1849 as the base from which it would attack the Allegheny front, and the shop complex that grew there eventually filled more than 100 buildings across over 215 acres. The Railroaders Memorial Museum occupies one of the last pieces of that original plant: the Master Mechanics Building, put up in 1882 and today one of only three surviving structures from the first Altoona works.

The building was never a showpiece. It began as the office and stores building for the Altoona Machine Shops and went on to house the railroad's first test department, its railroad police, the engineering staff and the Middle Division headquarters. A third floor was added in 1886 and a fourth by 1909. Conrail vacated it in 1984; a $12 million rehabilitation begun in 1990, with Philadelphia architects Wallace Roberts and Todd adapting the structure, allowed the museum to open there on 25 April 1998. The red brick, the segmental-arched windows divided by brick pilasters and the corbelled cornice are all original PRR standard practice.

The institution is older than its use of the building. A 1938 Altoona Mirror column floated the idea of a community railroad museum; the Altoona Railway Museum Club was chartered by the National Railway Historical Society in 1968; the Railroaders Memorial Museum was incorporated in 1972 and opened to the public on 21 September 1980. The same organisation operates the Horseshoe Curve National Historic Landmark about 5 miles (8 km) west, and markets the two sites together as Railroad City.

The roundhouse is the strongest interior subject - the 105-foot turntable, the open bays and K4 1361 stripped down for restoration. Interior light is low and mixed, so a fast lens or a high ISO matters more than a long zoom, and because the museum publishes no photography policy you should ask staff before setting up a tripod. Outdoors, the display spurs put GG1 4913, the depressed-centre flat car 766163 and the N5 cabin car within easy reach, and the 1882 brick facade with its corbelled cornice and segmental-arched windows photographs best in raking morning or late-afternoon light.

Across the tracks, the platform area at the Altoona Transportation Center gives a legal public vantage point on Norfolk Southern movements over the old PRR main line. Five miles (8 km) west, the Horseshoe Curve observation park sits directly against three running tracks with GP9 7048 on display; a 2008 count put roughly 51 scheduled freight trains a day through the Curve, before helper moves are counted.

The centrepiece is PRR K4s Pacific No. 1361, built at Altoona's Juniata Shops in May 1918 - a 150-ton locomotive on 80-inch drivers, one of some 350 K4s built in Altoona out of a class of 425. It hauled the Broadway Limited, later worked Central Division runs west to Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis, finished its career on New York and Long Branch commuter trains, and was retired in September 1956 with 2,469,000 miles (3,973,000 km) behind it. It stood on display at Horseshoe Curve from 8 June 1957 until September 1985, returned to steam for excursions in April 1987, was designated Pennsylvania's official state steam locomotive in December 1987, and was sidelined by a bearing failure in August 1988. It now sits in the museum's Harry Bennett Memorial Roundhouse under a restoration managed with FMW Solutions, whose engineering report the Federal Railroad Administration approved in early 2021; by September 2021 the steam dome flush patch welds had been repaired and the firebox and rear flue sheet removed.

Around it is a collection that is unusually specific to this one shop town. GG1 No. 4913, a 237-ton electric built at Altoona in January 1942, is one of 139 GG1s built for the PRR's 11,000-volt electrification. EMD GP9 No. 7048, 1,750 hp and delivered in December 1955, is the locomotive that replaced 1361 on the pedestal at Horseshoe Curve. Nancy, an 0-4-0 saddle-tank built by Vulcan Iron Works in 1918 (works number 2826) for the Berwind-White Coal Mining Company, was the last steam locomotive to work in Blair County.

The cars are where the collection earns its reputation with students of the Pennsylvania Railroad: class R50B express refrigerator car No. 2561, built at Altoona in 1929 and the only known survivor of its class; Railway Post Office No. 5239 Robert E. Hannegan, the only PRR RPO named after an individual; the 1949 Pullman-Standard blunt-end observation car Mountain View, one of two used on the Broadway Limited; class N5 cabin car No. 477577 of June 1929, the first all-steel design of its type; and depressed-centre flat car No. 766163, the 1952 Juniata-built Queen Mary built to move turbo-generator sets, transformers and castings. The roundhouse works around a 105-foot turntable that still turns.

Visits are entirely self-guided - the museum states that both of its sites are 100% self-guided, with guided tours reserved for school and scout groups from Wednesday to Friday. The first floor holds the ticket window, the gift shop and the Norfolk Southern Theatre, where orientation films explain why the PRR put its shops here. The second floor is what sets this museum apart from most rail collections: life-size dioramas and animatronic figures reconstruct the working and domestic lives of shop employees and their families rather than parading hardware. The third floor turns to Pennsylvania Railroad artefacts and a model railroad.

Behind and outside the building are the rolling stock spurs and the Harry Bennett Memorial Roundhouse, built in phases from 2002 and again between 2007 and 2010, with indoor bays and the working 105-foot turntable. Inside, the Patterson Family Memorial Wall honours roughly 2,500 named railroaders.

The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission stops 30 minutes before closing at the museum and 45 minutes before closing at Horseshoe Curve, where the store stays open until 4:00 PM. No pets are allowed at either site. The former PRR main line runs immediately alongside the museum: Norfolk Southern freights pass constantly, and Amtrak's Pennsylvanian calls at the Altoona Transportation Center directly across the tracks.