Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania 50

Posted by on Jun 11, 2025 in | Comments Off on Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania 50 Rising from the rolling hills and lush farmlands of Lancaster County is a sprawling complex of exhibit buildings, train tracks, and historic railroad equipment. Together, they tell the story of how railroads changed the lives of people for more than two centuries. For 50 years now, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has preserved and interpreted the commonwealth’s rich railroad history. It has...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Feb 21, 2025 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter In the Spring 2024 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage, we looked at the World War II experience of Steelton’s Thomas Mosley, one of the first Black men to serve in the U.S. Marines since the Revolutionary War. In this issue we continue our focus on World War II as we approach the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge and highlight the role of Pennsylvanians in that decisive conflict. In the...
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Bethlehem Steel by Steven M. Landis and John K. Landis

Posted by on Nov 18, 2024 in | Comments Off on Bethlehem Steel by Steven M. Landis and John K. Landis Bethlehem Steel Rusting Relic by Steven M. Landis and John K. Landis America Through Time, 96 pp., paperback $24.99 Primarily a collection of photographs taken in 2006, this book captures a period in which the Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, Northampton County, lay abandoned and decaying before being revitalized as a tourist attraction, with casino, hotel, restaurant and shops. Photographer...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jul 24, 2023 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter For years Pennsylvania has been recognized as a seedbed for first-class professional athletes, not the least of whom are the baseball players who have hailed from the state. The names have become legendary — Honus Wagner and Christy Mathewson, Stan Musial and Roy Campanella, Reggie Jackson and Mike Piazza. Among this cream of Pennsylvania’s substantial baseball crop is Dick Allen, who began his...
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The Paoli Local and the Birth of Pennsylvania’s Main Line

Posted by on Mar 11, 2022 in | Comments Off on The Paoli Local and the Birth of Pennsylvania’s Main Line “In the year 1857, when the Columbia Railroad passed into the possession of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company . . . the local travel was very light, very few of the business men of the city having residences out of town,” wrote William Hasell Wilson (1811–1902) in his memoir of life as a railroad engineer. During the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries, Wilson, his family and the Pennsylvania...
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Parkside Chapel

Posted by on Aug 13, 2021 in | Comments Off on Parkside Chapel Located near Henryville, in Paradise Township, Monroe County, Parkside Chapel stands as an architectural reminder of the growth of the Pocono Mountains region as a popular destination for affluent outdoorsmen and vacationers in the late 19th century. Following the American Civil War, logging was the leading industry in the region; however, as the forests were quickly being depleted, it became...
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Railroad Depots of Northwest Pennsylvania by Dan West

Posted by on Jun 7, 2021 in | Comments Off on Railroad Depots of Northwest Pennsylvania by Dan West Railroad Depots of Northwest Pennsylvania by Dan West Arcadia, 128 pp., paperback $21.95 Two years ago, I was traveling to northwestern Pennsylvania to attend a meeting in Titusville, when I took a slight detour to photograph Union Station in Erie. The one resource that could really have helped me was Dan West’s Railroad Depots of Northwest Pennsylvania. Who knew there were so many stations in a...
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The Giant That Stumbled: Baldwin Locomotive Works Dominated Its Field for a Century, Then Vanished

Posted by on Mar 24, 2021 in | Comments Off on The Giant That Stumbled: Baldwin Locomotive Works Dominated Its Field for a Century, Then Vanished How could a Philadelphia-based global giant with 20,000 employees and a history of 120 years of operation disappear, leaving little trace? It happened to the Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW), which perfected the art and science of building steam locomotives for domestic and worldwide markets. Baldwin was so dominant that in 1901, eight smaller builders that were scattered around the East banded...
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Gallantly Saving Railroad History: The Adventures of George M. Hart, Founding Director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Posted by on Dec 30, 2020 in | Comments Off on Gallantly Saving Railroad History: The Adventures of George M. Hart, Founding Director of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania 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...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Dec 24, 2020 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter In 2016 the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO) presented its first Community Initiative Awards to recognize organizations, agencies, municipalities and individuals throughout the commonwealth for their historic preservation successes. The program has become a key component of PA SHPO’s statewide historic preservation plan, #PreservationHappensHere, encouraging...
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