"The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Cumberland to Oakland: 1842-1851" - Summer Lecture Series

The Oakland B&O Museum will feature Al Feldstein for its August lecture of the summer. It will be held at the 1884 Oakland B&O Station on Thursday, August 20th at 6:00.  Al Feldstein will begin his talk at 7:00.  

Al Feldstein's presentation is entitled "The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Cumberland to Oakland: 1842-1851".  This is a narrated slide-show presentation based upon old postcard views and photographs, mostly from the early 1900s. It was originally prepared for the Garrett County Historical Society Spring Fund-raising Banquet which was held on April 26, 2001. The presentation has been updated somewhat for the August meeting, but still depicts much of the B&O's route from Cumberland to Oakland. Various locomotives, railroad stations, landmarks and historic sites, many long gone, will be depicted along with an array of facts, figures, dates and local Garrett County history.

A multi-award-winning public historian, Albert Louis Feldstein has since 1980 successfully published or produced over thirty-five books, prints, videotapes, and DVDs depicting the history of all three western Maryland Counties - Allegany, Garrett and Washington, as well as nearby West Virginia. His books and tapes have focused upon such varied subjects as historic postcards, newspapers, floods, grave-sites, coal mining, railroads, community histories, and tour guides to historic sites. The majority of his historical works have gone into second and third printings.

A 2003 effort, a political history poster entitled, "Buttons of the Cause, 1960- 2003: The Events - The People - The Organizations - The Issues", has sold thousands of copies and in 2005 was accepted for exhibit and sale at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington where it remained a popular item until 2013.

Between 2007 and 2010  Feldstein developed five historical/educational websites, all initiated in collaboration with the Western Maryland Regional Library (WHILBR) in Hagerstown. These have focused on African-American and Women’s history, as well as local, state, and presidential politics. Several of these have served as models for other communities and have been linked to libraries, educational and historical institutions across the state and nation.