Gallantly Saving Railroad History: The Adventures of George M. Hart, Founding Director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

George M. Hart, flanked by his ex-Canadian Pacific Ten-Wheeler, No. 972, in York, 1966.
Photo by Clarence Weaver, Courtesy Jeff Pontius, Penn Valley Pictures

Four months before his retirement in 1983 as founding director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, George Michener Hart (1919–2008) received high praise as the state’s premier railroad historian from the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of transportation, John H. White Jr. Addressed to Hart’s boss, Peter C. Welsh, director of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission’s Bureau of Museums, White’s correspondence gave testimony to Hart’s deep expertise and his decades of accumulated knowledge of trains, pointing out that “George knew things that weren’t written down.” But what White said next of Hart’s repertoire of all things railroad spoke volumes: “Unless you know something about [railroad history], one might be so misguided as to believe his expertise is only typical of the average enthusiast . . . [whose] learning in historical matters is, in fact, nearly nonexistent. And yet to anyone having no expertise in the subject, his observations appear very learned. Not so with George. On just about every reference subject or personality, no matter how obscure, he seems to know something about it and very often a great deal that is new comes forth. How many other individuals are there in the United States with this degree of expertise can be counted on one hand.”

George Hart has left a remarkable legacy for generations of visitors to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. Under his tenure, he advised PHMC on the early selection of the museum site, almost single-handedly assembled the museum’s core collection of historic steam locomotives and rolling stock for exhibition, and pulled together a massive archive of rare books, photographs, ephemera and artifacts to help preserve the state’s railroading heritage — including much of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s famed corporate library.

More importantly, he personally saved numerous full-sized steam locomotives and historic railroad equipment from the scrapper’s torch that otherwise never would have been seen by future generations. The self-taught Hart was truly a Renaissance man of sorts, as he wore a myriad of hats including those of historian, educator, museum director, curator, shortline railroad executive, historic preservationist, conservationist, raconteur and railroader throughout his career. His prodigious memory was remarkable; he could recall facts and dates about railroading and local history topics off the top of his head with an encyclopedic mastery. It is safe to say that had there been no George Hart, there would never have been a state railroad museum. Never before had a Pennsylvania citizen undertaken heroic acts of railroad heritage preservation on such a large scale, often using his own resources.

Hart was a scion of an old and honored Bucks County family. His earliest ancestor in America was descended from a Scots Irish settler in Plumstead Township in 1735. His family moved to Doylestown Township about 1830. An ancestral relative, Col. William Hart, was a patriot during the Revolutionary War era and one of the capturers of Tory outlaw Moses Doan. In 1857 the J. Hart & Co. banking and conveyancing firm began operations by Josiah and George Hart. The bank was the second financial institution established in that town, continued in partnership in 1871 by their sons John and Frank, George’s grandfather. His great-grandfather Josiah was involved in bringing the North Pennsylvania Railroad branch to Doylestown in 1856. Hart’s maternal grandfather, Hart Michener, had been a freight agent who rode the freight car on the Doylestown & Easton trolley route.

Hart photographing the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Horseshoe Curve in 1937, captured at a farther distance by his friend Edwin Bye Jr. The image shows the Pennsylvania Railroad’s westbound Metropolitan passing the Day Express heading eastbound.
George M. Hart Collection, Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania / MG-199 (RR80.49)

Born on February 12, 1919, George M. Hart attended Doylestown’s public school and the nearby Buckingham Friends School up to the eighth grade from 1925 to 1932. During the height of the Great Depression, he matriculated to George School, a private Quaker boarding school in nearby Newtown, graduating in 1937 (although he found Quakerism fascinating, Hart was nondenominational by faith). Unlike most children of his generation, he had interests that extended far beyond an ordinary fascination with trains. His father encouraged him to use a camera, and he soon accumulated a large collection of subjects, including one-room schoolhouses, old Pennsylvania barns, the Willow Grove to Doylestown trolley line, covered bridges, and Bucks County scenes.

At the 1939 edition of the New York World’s Fair, 21-year old George Hart admires the British-imported London, Midland & Scottish Railway locomotive Coronation Scot, coupled to eight carriages, displayed on track one at the Transportation Pavilion exhibits on the fairgrounds.
Collection of Kurt R. Bell

In particular, George developed an avid interest in railroading. He spent many boyhood hours at the Reading Company depot two blocks from his home. In 1931, at age 11, no doubt influenced by his father, George took his first railroad photograph using his father’s old Kodak 3-A, purchased in 1906 and given to George as a gift. “I enjoyed watching operation of the turntable,” said Hart in a 2005 interview. “It was 80 feet long and I remember there was a locomotive on it. Three men pushed against a breast-high handle and I was impressed when they started that thing moving.” Hart shot photographs until 1968, when he was unable to obtain postcard-size 122 film. He drew his initial inspiration after having read an article concerning the International Engine Picture Club appearing in a copy of Railroad Man’s Magazine. “I wanted to photograph the steam engines while they still ran before electrification was completed,” he said. His first train ride occurred at age 7 in New Jersey, from Camden to Atlantic City, during a vacation with his parents in 1926. Eventually, he travelled widely to expand his knowledge of railroading and assembled a collection of roughly 3,800 negatives, taken between 1931 and 1968, and 6,000 photographic prints documenting numerous eastern United States railroads. These images now compose a significant portion of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania archives.

His picture taking and print trading soon expanded into historical research. In 1933, during a program at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, he met Paul T. Warner, the librarian of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and began a lifelong association with him that included studying for countless hours in the Baldwin archives, hiking abandoned rights-of-way, and riding locomotive cabs on various shortline and mainline railroads throughout the U.S. and Canada. This partnership led to the compilation of A Century of Reading Company Motive Power, published by the Reading Railroad in 1939. For many years thereafter, the Reading Company referred countless questions on their corporate history to Hart and recognized him as its unofficial historian. His early field trips, which involved hiking with his camera, embraced a study of the physical remains over the Allegheny Portage, Mauch Chunk Switchback, Quakertown & Bethlehem, and South Pennsylvania railroads during the 1930s.

Hart’s photography led him to travel extensively. In November 1934 he rode one of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society’s first excursions on the Baltimore & Ohio to Halethorpe, Maryland. He rode the introductory runs of the Reading Company’s brand new Crusader train in 1937 and photographed the 75th anniversary Civil War Veterans Reunion train to Gettysburg (with President Franklin D. Roosevelt onboard) in July 1938 as well as the last runs of the B&O’s Royal Blue in April 1957.

Boarding school students at George School station await the arrival of the 4:10 p.m. train from Newtown, en route to Philadelphia Reading Terminal, in this photo by George Hart. The date of the scene is Friday, March 6, 1948, and students are heading home to visit their families for the weekend.
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, MG-199 (RR80.49)

From 1938 through 1942 Hart audited night classes in American social and cultural history at the University of Pennsylvania but never completed his degree. He also worked as a farmhand for extra spending money during the summer of 1941. After briefly teaching history as a substitute instructor at George School, he became assistant business manager and treasurer at his alma mater for the next 23 years, acquiring the nickname “Casey.” The school adjoined the Reading’s Newtown branch, which afforded Hart numerous opportunities for train photography. He befriended the station agent, Joe Schmitt, and helped organize train trips to interschool sports events. When George School planned a special trip to see a production of Hamlet in Philadelphia, Hart suggested chartering a special train via the Reading system instead of renting six buses.

At the end of steam operations on the Norfolk & Western, Hart photographed Nos. 1237 and 1206 on a freight train out of Blue Ridge, Virginia, on February 21, 1959. Hart’s notes record the details of the scene as follows, “This may have been the last double headed steam out of Roanoke prior to diesels fully taking over the helper.” Hart braved 18-degree temperatures to record the last moments of steam on the mainline.
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, MG-199 (RR80.49)

From 1959 until 1964 he advised the Reading Company in the planning of 61 runs of the famed Iron Horse Rambles. For many of the trips, he helped select routes, prepared the passenger itineraries, and wrote the whistle, bell and smoke scripts for the engine crews. A special clause in his school contract excused him from employment on dates of the Rambles. He rode every trip except the final run in September 1964, when he started running his own trains.

Hart’s disappointment in the Rambles cancellation led to the purchase of steam locomotives and rolling stock in 1963–64 under his private company, Rail Tours Inc. As early as 1960 he had sponsored chartered day-long public excursion trips on the Reading system from Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal to Hershey Park, New York City, Baltimore and the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope (even author James Michener was once onboard). Now with Rail Tours, Hart became one of the first private individuals in the U.S. to own and operate mainline railroad equipment. Over his lifetime, he owned seven steam locomotives purchased mostly from the Canadian Pacific Railroad, three diesels, 34 passenger cars, and numerous freight cars and cabooses. He ran weekend tourist excursions, initially in York, on the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad until 1967 and then out of Jim Thorpe, Carbon County, on the former Central Railroad of New Jersey’s Nesquehoning branch from 1971 until 2004.

On June 17, 1969, Hart was appointed director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, the first state-operated railroad museum in the United States, by PHMC’s executive director, Sylvester K. Stevens. Hart knew Stevens from his days on the staff of George School and in their mutual activities with the Pennsylvania Historical Association. Hart had been tapped by Stevens in 1964 to serve on a panel of three consultants to advise in the selection of a site for the planned Railroad Museum, for which Strasburg, Lancaster County, was chosen in 1965. Impressed by Hart’s intellectual acumen and mastery of railroad history, Stevens offered him the museum directorship, and Hart was given free rein to plan and collect as he pleased.

Initially, Hart’s office was located in the William Penn Memorial Museum (now The State Museum of Pennsylvania) in Harrisburg. In the years before the Railroad Museum was built, the security-minded Hart would visit the Strasburg site once a week, keeping tabs on the condition of the collection. From time to time, he also consulted on railroad history for PHMC’s Pennsylvania Lumber Museum in Potter County and Eckley Miners’ Village in Luzerne County.

Hart’s Canadian Pacific No. 972 is turned on an ancient Armstrong-type turntable using strong backs and capable hands on the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad in Delta, 1966. Hart is pictured second from left. Built in 1912 by the Montreal Locomotive Works for the Canadian Pacific Railway as a class D10j Ten Wheeler, No. 972 was Hart’s most recognizable steam locomotive and the one most often associated with him. After thousands of miles of regular use at Jim Thorpe, Hart sold his engine to the Strasburg Rail Road in 1995.
Collection of Kurt R. Bell

Hart’s involvement in the initial and formative years of the Railroad Museum project was pivotal to its overall success. He oversaw the historic research and cosmetic restoration work of all museum equipment performed by the Strasburg Rail Road in the late 1960s and early 1970s and scripted the first major exhibition installation. The museum was completed in 1974 and opened to the public on April 22, 1975.

Hart explains the finer details of railroad models to some youngsters at the opening of a major exhibition, Railroads in Pennsylvania, that he curated at the William Penn Memorial Museum in Harrisburg, 1970. The exhibit helped generate public interest in the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania project that was still in the planning stages at that time.
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, MG-199

Hart’s finest hour, by far, was his acquisition of the famed Pennsylvania Railroad library. While bidding on lots on behalf of PHMC at the three-day Penn Central Auction in March 1972 at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, Hart went by the name “M. White,” which most participants confused with John H. White Jr., the noted Smithsonian transportation curator also in attendance. The abbreviation was actually for Maxwell Whiteman, librarian of the Philadelphia Union League and a PHMC commissioner, who was responsible for the funding appropriation to make the auction purchases. Hart was notorious for switching his seat often during the bidding to throw off other competitors. Over $27,000 worth of acquisitions were purchased for the planned Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania library. Many attendees expressed frustration over the mysterious and successful bidder who gobbled up what seemed like all of the lots, but at the end of the auction, when it was announced that PHMC was the winner, the room erupted into hearty applause.

With a keen sense of connoisseurship in all things railroad, Hart was also instrumental in saving the Walter A. Lucas, Thomas T. Taber and Munson Paddock collections for the Railroad Museum. Taken together, all three of these collections consist of some of the best early-20th-century railroad photography collections ever assembled in this country. Hart personally knew these collectors and had the right contacts to make these important acquisitions happen, which clearly was key to the early success of the museum. He had amassed so many donations that by 1972 he was instructed by his supervisors to enter everything he could recall up to that time into an accessions ledger. Years later, thanks to Hart’s tireless efforts, the historic Pennsylvania Railroad Collection of locomotives and cars was kept together intact despite threats from the Penn Central that almost broke it up out of financial necessity. This was no small task and without Hart’s intervention, the Pennsylvania Railroad collection might have been lost forever.

Director George Hart observes the construction phase of the museum yard in the early 1970s.
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, MG-199

Hart also worked behind the scenes when that seemed to be a more effective strategy. When Penn Central was planning to scrap its Electro-Motive E7 passenger diesel No. 4201, Hart knew that it was one of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s first two passenger units, built in 1945 along with No. 5900. The pair ran up unbelievable mileage and dependability records, helping to turn the tide toward dieselization on what had been a staunchly steam-loyal railroad outside of the electrified Northeast. Recognizing the unit’s significance, Hart collaborated with Lou Miller, PC engine house foreman in Harrisburg, to buy some time. Miller painted “4201” on some hapless, worn-out switcher and shipped it to the scrap dealer. Before the ruse was discovered, the Railroad Museum came up with the money to buy the E7 at scrap value. Restored to its mid-1950s appearance, it is proudly displayed in the museum’s George M. Hart Rolling Stock Hall.

Out of 62 discrete donations made by Hart to the Railroad Museum over 14 years, perhaps the most notable are two full-sized steam locomotives: Reading Company class B4a No. 1251 and ex-Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal 0-6-0T No. 13 (the latter now at the Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum in Conshocton, Ohio). He was also instrumental in donating a complete set of shop and boiler tools from Ben Kantner, general boiler inspector of the Reading Company’s boiler shop in Reading from 1944 to 1963. Other significant donations from Hart include two Reading station signs (one from Monocacy and the other from Elverson), a rare Reading Company Hall banjo signal from Huntingdon Valley, a wooden cross buck sign and post rescued from the south side of Witte Station on the Quakertown & Bethlehem Railroad, a circa 1852 locomotive lithograph of the Illinois, and the remnants of an October 1905 boiler explosion of Williamsport & North Branch Railroad locomotive No. 16, excavated on site in Ringdale by Hart and a friend in 1975 in what is now the Loyalsock State Forest.

On groundbreaking day, August 14, 1972, Railroad Museum director George Hart, right, turns the first ceremonial spadeful of dirt, joined by PHMC Bureau of Museums director William Richards at the Strasburg site of the new Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania State Archives, RG-13

Hart negotiated for the Railroad Museum the loan from Penn Central of the 12 Pennsylvania Railroad executive oil portraits that hung in the corporate board room, as well as the loan from the Reading Company of the prized set of 1830s Lewis Kirk silver pitcher and goblets. Hart also directed general historical research and was primarily responsible for the acquisition of most pre-1983 locomotives and rolling stock that now form the backbone of the museum’s vehicular collection. His proudest moment came in 1980 when the Smithsonian steamed the original 1831 John Bull locomotive, regarded a national treasure, for testing on the Warrenton branch of the Southern Railway in rural Virginia. Hart was given a chance to run the engine for a distance, which thrilled him beyond belief (the replica John Bull, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad for the 1940 edition of the New York World’s Fair, is exhibited at Strasburg).

Hart’s eccentricities were as colorful as his railroad expertise. He lived and slept most of the week on a settee in his office that was crowded with unanswered correspondence, piles of papers, and donations. Sometimes he slept in a made-up bed in the Western Maryland business car or on a caboose mattress in the observation car Tower View. Once, while heading to the Strasburg bank with the day’s admissions proceeds on a busy holiday opening, he lost the money bag when it rolled off the seat of his Nash Rambler. Thinking the loot disappeared through a gaping hole on the floor, he paid for the entire day’s proceeds out of his pocket. Luckily, a few days later the missing funds turned up under the seat of his car.

On occasion, a former custodial guide stumbled on Hart taking a bath in the bay of a hopper car in the museum yard. Once when his Rambler broke down along an interstate while transporting greasy steam locomotive parts, one of his museum staff was dispatched to Allentown to rescue him. Another time, during a serious conversation, he was seen pulling a chicken leg out of his pocket, saved in napkins from an earlier lunch, and started munching on it in mid-conversation. These behaviors made Hart a lovable character among the railfans but gave his bosses in Harrisburg a fit of heartburn.

Two iconic steam locomotives owned by Hart—Canadian Pacific Class D10j No. 972 and Reading Company B4a switcher No. 1251—captured in York in July 1966. Hart’s Rail Tours ran No. 1251 on the Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad from 1964 until 1966, when the locomotive’s tube time expired. In 1972 Hart officially donated No. 1251 to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, where it is exhibited today.
Photo by Clarence Weaver, Courtesy Jeff Pontius, Penn Valley Pictures

Following his departure as director emeritus from the Railroad Museum on June 17, 1983, Hart continued his railroading interests as president and general manager of the Stewartstown Railroad, a quaint 7-mile shortline in York County, which hauled freight and passenger tourists.

George Hart in the cab of his last owned steam locomotive, No. 1098, in September 1998. Built in 1913 by the Canadian Locomotive Co. for the Canadian National Railways, No. 1098 was a class D10h Ten-Wheeler (similar to his No. 972) that he acquired from the Steamtown Foundation in 1987 after a 17-year effort. The engine ran briefly on Rail Tours trains out of Jim Thorpe in the fall of 1994 and was last steamed in 1998. It is now owned by the Reading and Northern Railroad.
Photo by Kurt R. Bell

In honor of his many years of service to PHMC, the original Rolling Stock Hall wing at the Railroad Museum was christened the George M. Hart Hall of Locomotives & Rolling Stock in 1985. A wall-mounted plaque recognizes his lasting contributions adjacent to the entrance to Steinman Station. On November 4, 2006, on his last visit to Strasburg, Hart was honored in the Railroad Museum auditorium by the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society with its Gerald M. Best Senior Achievement Award, the highest honor bestowed in the rail history field.

Hart passed away at age 89 from natural causes on April 17, 2008. He was interred in the Doylestown Cemetery where his headstone respectfully honors him as “Pennsylvania’s ‘Mr. Railroad.’” At the center of Hart’s permanent legacy will always be the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, where his memory will live on through the artifacts, documents, locomotives, cars and stories he saved in one man’s quest to preserve the state’s railroad history for future generations of Pennsylvanians. His lifelong devotion to the cause of railroad history and its preservation in the United States is immeasurable. No doubt, there will never again be another railroader like him, ever.

The author wishes to acknowledge Cory Amsler, Dan Cupper, Donna Dvorak-Knieriem, Patrick Morrison, Peter Osborne and David Williamson for their assistance with research for this article.

Kurt R. Bell, an archivist at the Pennsylvania State Archives, is the author of two books and more than 60 articles on railroad history and technology. His work has been published in Railroad History, NRHS Bulletin and The Journal of Transport History, and he has appeared in PBS and Time/Warner documentaries about railroads. Previously he was librarian/archivist at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania for 18 years.