B&O Railroad Museum marks 20-year snowstorm anniversary with roof collapse tour
BALTIMORE -- Two decades ago, Marylanders were busy digging out from two feet of snow during the President's Day blizzard of 2003.
On that day, Baltimore City saw 28 inches of snow, which was too much for the roof of the B&O Railroad Museum.
The roof began to splinter, creating extensive damage that marks an important event in the museum's history, B&O Railroad Museum Kris Hoellen said.
The extent of the damage at the B&O Railroad Museum became obvious the following morning.
Now, the tragic outcome of that historic snow day is being remembered through a tour.
"When that roof came down, that wood splintered into lots of little pieces," a tour guide said as it showed WJZ's Paul Gessler where the wood once buckled.
Steve Johnson, the railroad museum's facilities director, still remembers getting a call from the alarm company the day of the snowstorm.
"She said, 'We heard that there might be a roof collapse,' and I went, 'Uh-oh,'" he said.
That "uh-oh" became obvious when the sun rolled over the horizon.
Between the snow and the winds, four to six feet of snow accumulated on various parts of the roof.
Under that weight, portions of the roof began to collapse. There were three collapses over the span of about 10 hours.
The roof collapse damaged nine locomotives and several train cars.
The magnitude of the destruction still sends shivers up the spine of Kris Hoellen, the museum's executive director.
"Thank God I wasn't the executive director that day," Hoellen said.
Although the museum's insurance company covered some of the damage, the museum relied on donations to fully recover from the snowstorm.
"Support came in worldwide to make sure this museum and this roof was put back," Hoellen said.
The museum was eventually restored to its original 1884 appearance and reopened within two years.
Some of those donations even went towards building a maintenance facility that was used, in part, to restore those damaged locomotives and train cars.
That was the "silver lining in an otherwise dark thunderstorm cloud that came through that night," Johnson said.
