The Brunswick Railroad Museum

Fantastic collection of Brunswick history items along with an impressive amount of running model train sets! This is a fun stop for families, unique to our region!

Great place for the kids, historically accurate, but it has become a tad too pricy for my tastes.

We’ve been here a few times, it’s best to go when there is a kids musician at Beans in the Belfry, right down the street (which is converted church — quaint restaurant/​coffee spot that has kids musicians once in awhile).
The museum is under-​whelming, but has just enough to entice kids. The top floor has a fairly big model railroad, but you have to pick your kid up if they are 5 or under — to see all the miniature towns, etc. The 2^nd floor has a victorian display — not kids based. The shop on the bottom floor is sparse as well.
Overall, barely worth the $ 8 for me and my son — he got bored of the railroad after about 20mins — but Beans on the Belfry he loved. The combo makes it worth a trip.

I found out about this place through the most bizarre fashion. One day, driving home from work, I heard a commercial on the radio from a car company that said something like, «One-​day road trip idea #347: Visit the Model Railroad Museum in Brunswick, Maryland.»
I said to myself, «Self, I didn’t know there was a model railroad museum in Brunswick.» For that matter, I didn’t really know where Brunswick was. I had to go look it up on a map. I was pleased to find that it wasn’t far away — just across the Point of Rocks bridge and over a bit, only like 30 minutes from my house.
My 7 and 4 year old boys have always loved trains, and we’ve always gone out of our way to visit railroad museums. So today we went for a trip to the Brunswick Model Railroad Museum.
It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but there are actually four floors of stuff inside. Admission was like $ 6 per adult and $ 3 per kid (check the web site to be sure), and I though it was worth the price of admission.
On the first floor, there is a National Park Service small museum about the history of Brunswick and the railroad and canal traffic that built the town. Plus there is a gift shop and very nice, clean restrooms.
Down in the basement, they had a special setup of a G Scale model railroad for the holidays. I’m not sure what they put in there when the holiday train isn’t up.
On the second floor are static displays of what life was like during the Victorian Age. Right as you walk in the door from the stairs, there are three colored sheets of questions you can ask your kids to help them think about and learn from the exhibits. I thought they were very useful and got us to appreciate the modern conveniences we have in our lives today.
On the third floor was a very large model railroad layout that started in Washington, DC, and followed the train through Silver Spring and Point of Rocks out past Brunswick. There were some small red buttons for kids to push that made sound effects along the way. It was a nicely done setup, and the boys and I enjoyed walking back and forth checking out the scenery and watching the model trains go by.
Given the choice between going to the Northern Virginia Model Railroad Museum in Vienna and coming here to Brunswick, I think this one was better. There was a lot more to see here. The down side is that you’ll save some money at the Vienna museum because they don’t charge admission (but they’re only open one Saturday per month), and they don’t have a gift shop, so your kids won’t be whining asking you to buy them $ 50 model train sets.