Baltimore Streetcar Museum

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Every year, a trolley/streetcar/tram museum in northeastern United States volunteers to host an annual "Cabin Fever Day" event for volunteers from other Museums. This year, the Baltimore Streetcar took its turn to host this year's event on February 18-19, 2011. The event is called "Cabin Fever Day" in reference to being stuck in the house during the winter season. The event seeks to get rid of those Cabin Fever blues.

Over 100 guests descended on the Baltimore Streetcar Museum to see how the Museum can "strut its stuff." The attendees were not disappointed. Streetcar operations, that included guest operations for visiting Museum volunteers, were held on Friday afternoon and evening and all day Saturday. Saturday's operation was a marvel. Nine, that's right, nine, streetcars ran on a schedule that gave all the appearance of a public transit authority during a typical rush hour. It was, perhaps, the best headway in the nation! The only time the cars did not run is when operations were suspended for lunch and dinner.

And ... there was plenty of food! Pizzas (from Roma Pizza in Hampden) were ordered out on Friday night and a caterer (Winchester Catering, Inc.) was engaged for a marvelous hot lunch and sumptuous dinner. A magnificent PowerPoint™ presentation, with a great contemporary music background, was shown after dinner, celebrating the Museum's 40 years of operation. A wonderful DVD of the snow sweeper in action, in stereo sound, during the blizzard of December 19, 2009 video followed. After that, an interesting slide presentation was given, showing the progress of car #417. The audience was held spellbound during all three presentations.

No doubt, scores and scores of pictures were taken over the two days. Baltimore Streetcar Museum's photographer extraordinaire, Steve Abramowitz, has provided a small sampling of pictures from the event. To be fair, no names will be used so that no wrong name (or none at all) will be paired with a picture.

Event staff for Cabin Fever Day included John Engleman, Ed Amrhein, Buster Hughes, Carl Merson, John La Costa, John O'Neill, Dennis Yeager, Don Homberg, Jerry Kelly, Bill Monaghan, Harry Donahue, Steve and Carmella Abramowitz, Dave and Jo Wilson, Sam and Bill Shear, C.J. Grosskopf, Justin Thillman, Ray Cannon, Mark Dawson, Tom Caldwell, Chris McNally, Jerry Kelly, Bob Krueger and Mark Hurley, who organized the event. Without their team effort, Cabin Fever Day would not have been the resounding success it was.

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