Dear Friends of the B&O Railroad Museum:

The preparations to remove and reconstruct the clerestory roof have continued throughout the holiday season. The construction team is currently building a superstructure of scaffolding around the inside perimeter and center of the Roundhouse. This structure will be used to restore and replace lantern and clerestory windows and install electric, lighting and other building components. In the last couple months, the turntable decking has been surgically dismantled so that the base of this superstructure could be secured inside the turntable pit. The turntable decking was not immediately damaged as a result of the collapse in February 2003, but did suffer tremendous damage as a result of wet weather conditions in the months following the incident. Unavoidable and continuous flooding of the turntable pit rendered the mechanism inoperable. The decking seen on the turntable for the last 50 years of the Museum was not the original decking, but was placed atop the original decking along with other multiple layers. The Museum will reconstruct the turntable with wood appearing as close to the original decking as possible.