The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: May ninth, all aboard Altoona's Railroaders Memorial Museum.

It's fitting that this museum in the south central Pennsylvania city of Altoona is dedicated to the people who spent their lives working on the railroad, specifically the Pennsylvania Railroad. Altoona was founded by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1849 as an operations center for its fledgling track system. Thousands of laborers came here to build what grew into the largest railroad and for a century most consistently profitable corporation in the world.

Unlike other rail museums that focus primarily on the machines and technology that made railroads run, this one is also concerned with the people who conceived, built and ran this transportation system that transformed America.

The 45,000-square-foot facility is located in the railroad's century-old Mechanics and Testing building. It's filled with life- size elements that recreate the ambiance of a train station. As a steam locomotive is readied for departure, railworkers and passengers scurry amid shop scenes and home facades. Visitors are exposed to an array of films, interpretive displays and audio visual programs that convey how it looked and felt to live, work and grow up in a place once called Railroad City. They learn in human terms what it took to keep a great railroad running day and night. It's an impressive, well-told story.

Horseshoe Curve National Historic Landmark, located a few miles away and also run by the museum, is more evidence of that effort and accomplishment. Check our website: www.travelersjournal.com. And tune in tomorrow, when we'll visit another place where railroad history was made.

WDUQ

FMI For info on Altoona Railroad Museum information, call 814-946-0834 or www.railroadcity.com

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