'AMERICA'S GREAT ROAD' AT THE B&O RAILROAD MUSEUM

摘要

This modest permanent exhibit at the B&O Railroad Museum has important goals—providing an orientation to the museum and its collections, to the broader history of the Baltimore & Ohio, and to the technology and the historical role of American railroading generally. Given somewhat severe limitations of space (and funding, no doubt), "America's Great Road" necessarily falls short of fulfilling these large goals. But the curators' partial success deserves congratulations nonetheless. The exhibit marks a great departure for an institution whose other artifacts, displays, and interpretation mostly date to the dark ages of technology museums, conveying internalist history and Whig-gish determinism. Hence, the real accomplishment lies in mounting a professional and informative, if incomplete, orientation that incorporates perspectives from contextual technological history and the new social history.