DIY Network

Power and DCC: Museum Visit Take a tour of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. From "Workin' On the Railroad" episode DWRR-106L

Host Chris Chianelli visits Strasburg, Penn., and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. There he showcases some historic locomotives in the museum collection. Then he visits the Chattanooga Model Railroad's layout located at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. This is an impressive HO layout that features trains running with more than 100 cars--and locomotives powerful enough to run as many.

The museum has approximately 40 locomotives, some of which date back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of visitors each year go to enjoy the restored treasures from the past up close in all their glory.

In this first segment host Chris Chianelli takes a tour of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania where this Mogul 260 is on display, an extremely popular configuration for a steam engine.

"We're trying to keep as much of the historic fabric that is original to these pieces when they came to the museum," David Dunn, the director, said.

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Figure A

Here are some interesting tidbits about the museum and its trains:

• Chris's favorite diesel is housed in the Pennsylvania museum--the EP20 (figure A), one of the first two purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1945. "The museum has done an awesome job restoring it," Chris said.

  Note: Most may call the engines diesel, but they're actually diesel electric in that a massive diesel engine powered by an equally massive generator, which in turn ran electric motors down in the trucks.

• By the end of World War II diesel started to replace steam, and by the late '50s steam was gone.

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