Here in 1828 the first rails of American commerce were laid from this very spot, setting the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on its course to reshape the nation. The Baltimore and Ohio was the first common-carrier railroad in the country — meaning it was open to any shipper who could pay the fee, not just the company's own goods — and it was built to solve Baltimore's urgent commercial problem: the city was losing trade to New York and Philadelphia, whose canal connections to the interior gave them advantages that Baltimore, hemmed in by the Appalachian Mountains, could not match by water. The answer was iron rails and steam power.
The roundhouse at the center of this museum, built in 1884, is a masterpiece of industrial architecture: a 235-foot-diameter iron-and-glass dome that shelters a full circle of locomotive stalls radiating from a central turntable. The collection inside includes the Tom Thumb, Peter Cooper's famous 1830 locomotive that raced a horse-drawn car and lost — but proved the concept — and locomotives spanning the entire history of steam power in America. The first mile of track, laid from this spot toward the city on July 4, 1828, was the beginning of a network that would eventually cross the continent.
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, laid the ceremonial first stone.