B&O Railroad Museum gets a new name, plus a new front door

Visitors to Baltimore’s train museum will soon go on journeys through history — and across the country.

The B&O Railroad Museum announced Tuesday it will become the National Museum of Railroad History & Innovation, a name change that officials say reflects the museum’s broader mission as a national institution.

The rebrand comes with the restoration of the South Car Works Building, which operated as a railroad repair facility for over a century. The building will house an innovation section, more than 30 million railroad archival documents, and serve as the museum’s new entrance.

Kris Hoellen, the museum’s executive director, said the timing is deliberate. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the nation’s first common carrier railroad, was chartered on Feb. 28, 1827, making 2027 its bicentennial year. New additions to the museum, located west of downtown, will be open to the public in January.

While the museum has long focused on railroad history, Hoellen said, it has not always highlighted its own role in showcasing innovation, something the new name and its Innovation Hall are meant to correct.

“We are expanding our storytelling,” Hoellen said in an interview. “We’re expanding to focus even more on the present and future; it’s really a catch-up.”

The expansion is part of the museum’s $38 million, nearly three-year campus transformation project. The money is funded partly by the state, CSX and a mix of corporate donors.

Construction of the South Car Works Building started in May 2025 and is about 70% finished, Hoellen said.

At the construction site, workers said the bones of the building, which opened in 1869, remain intact, while retaining walls were removed to open up the space. That will make room for a community amphitheater near the front of the building.

The 33,000-square-foot building had not been open to the public because it did not meet modern building codes, Hoellen said.

Archival rooms, storage space and two classrooms are now being built within the old railroad repair facility, and the long-vacant building will become the museum’s new visual centerpiece.

“People will be able to see us from more of a distance,” Hoellen said during a tour of the site.

Previously only available to scholars and researchers, the archival documents include letters from President Abraham Lincoln to a B&O president, complete board of directors’ minutes and an original stock ledger.

“It’s a treasure trove of nationally significant documents, so it is exciting to have them on display for the first time,” she said.

The building’s second floor will house the new Innovation Hall, billed as “The Future is Here,” and will be organized into four galleries: “Smarter,” “Safer,” “Faster,” and “More Connected.”

Exhibits will feature technologies currently in use or being tested in the rail industry, such as drone track inspections and sensor systems, alongside gamified displays, Hoellen said.

Hoellen said the hall is meant to emphasize that the American railroad’s history and its ongoing evolution are inseparable.

“The railroad changed American life dramatically. It was as transformative as the internet has been in this last century,” she said. “It was a tremendously technologically innovative project when they first built it, and so then you go all the way forward to modern day and the future; they’re continuing to innovate.”

The rebrand will also feature a new logo, color palette, social media and merchandise that was developed with a branding firm, Hoellen said.

Looking ahead to the bicentennial year, Hoellen called the moment a rare one for a nearly two-century-old institution.

“It’s probably a once-in-a-generation experience that you change the course of an institution for its next 100 years,” she said. “We’re really excited here at the museum.”