Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

History

Ohio River

The railroad reached the Ohio River in 1852, 24 years after the project started. From the railroad's founding, one of its primary goals was to link the East Coast transportation hub of Baltimore across the Ohio River to Midwestern states. By crossing the Appalachian Mountains, a technical challenge, the railroad would link the new and booming territories of what at the time was the West, including Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, with the east coast rail and boat network, from Maryland northward. There was no rail link between Maryland and Virginia until the B&O opened the Harpers Ferry bridge in 1839.

Beginning in 1825, the Erie Canal provided an animal-powered water facility, connecting New York City with Ohio via Lake Erie. It took ten days to travel downstream from Buffalo, New York, to New York City. The Cumberland Road, later the beginning of the federally financed National Road, provided a road link for animal-powered transport between Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River and Wheeling, Virginia, in present-day West Virginia, on the Ohio River, when it was completed in 1837. It was the second paved road in the country. However, the 1831 DeWitt Clinton locomotive, running between Albany and Schenectady, New York, demonstrated speeds of 25 miles per hour (40 km/h), dramatically decreasing the cost of transportation and announcing the coming end of the canal and turnpike (road) systems, many of which were never completed since they were or would soon be obsolete.

In New York, political support for the Erie Canal detracted from the prospect of building a railroad to replace it, whose full length did not open until 1844. Mountains in Pennsylvania made construction in the western part of the state expensive and technically challenging; the Pennsylvania Railroad, linking Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, did not open its full length until 1852, and there was no rail link west from Pittsburgh to Ohio for several more years.

The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland, faced economic stagnation unless it opened a route to the Western states. On February 27, 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring "that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation". Their answer was to build a railroad: one of the first commercial lines in the world.

Their plans worked well, despite many political problems from canal backers and other railroads. Only the Pennsylvania Railroad was allowed to build in its namesake state, requiring the B&O to skirt around a corner of the state, even though the Pennsylvania Railroad didn't even operate in that area of Pennsylvania.

Charters

Although the Albany and Schenectady Railroad was chartered a year earlier, in 1826, the B & O Railroad was the first to open in the US. Philip E. Thomas and George Brown were the pioneers of the railroad. In 1826, they investigated railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held an organizational meeting on February 12, 1827, including about twenty-five citizens, most of whom were Baltimore merchants or bankers. Chapter 123 of the 1826 Session Laws of Maryland, passed February 28, 1827, and the Commonwealth of Virginia on March 8, 1827, chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company, with the task of building a railroad from the port of Baltimore west to a suitable point on the Ohio River. The railroad, formally incorporated April 24, was intended to provide a faster route for Midwestern goods to reach the East Coast than to the hugely successful but slow Erie Canal across upstate New York. Thomas was elected as the first president and Brown the treasurer. The capital of the proposed company was fixed at $5 million, but the B&O was initially capitalized in 1827 with a $3 million issue of stock. Half of this stock was reserved for the Maryland state government, which invested $1,000,000, and the municipal government of Baltimore, which invested $500,000. The remaining private equity was purchased by around 22,000 people, equivalent to one-quarter of the city's population at the time.

Early construction and legal battles

Construction began on July 4, 1828.

The initial tracks were built with granite stringers topped by strap iron rails. The first section, from Baltimore west to Ellicott's Mills (now known as Ellicott City), opened on May 24, 1830. While a steam locomotive (Tom Thumb) was demonstrated on the B&O in 1830, the railroad did not switch to steam until 1831, and the first trains on the 26-mile (42 km) round trip to Ellicott's Mills were pulled by horses.

From Ellicott's Mills, the railroad followed the Patapsco River upstream to a high point near Parr's Ridge (now known as Mount Airy), where it descended into the Monocacy and Potomac river valleys. Further extensions opened to Frederick (including the short Frederick Branch) on December 1, 1831; Point of Rocks on April 2, 1832; and Sandy Hook on December 1, 1834. Sandy Hook, on the north bank of the Potomac, remained the end of the line until 1836 when the railroad opened its bridge over the Potomac River to reach Harpers Ferry (then Virginia, now West Virginia). A connection at Harpers Ferry with the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, running southwest to Winchester, Virginia, opened in 1837.

Pushing west from Harpers Ferry, the B&O reached Martinsburg in May 1842; Hancock in June 1842; and Cumberland on November 5, 1842, which remained the end of the line for a number of years. Additional sections opened to Piedmont on July 21, 1851, and Fairmont on June 22, 1852. Later that year, the B&O finally reached the Ohio River at Moundsville, where port facilities were built, followed shortly later by Wheeling (then Virginia, now West Virginia) on January 1, 1853. Wheeling remained the terminus through the American Civil War until a bridge could be constructed across the Ohio River.

The narrow strip of available land along the Potomac River between Point of Rocks and Harpers Ferry caused years of legal battles between the B&O and the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal, as both sought to exclude the other from its use. A compromise eventually allowed the two companies to share the right of way. The B&O also prevailed in a lawsuit brought against it by the Washington and Baltimore Turnpike Road.

The B&O wanted links to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, as well as the parts of western Virginia draining into the Ohio River valley and ultimately the Mississippi River, such as Wheeling (where the National Road crossed the Ohio River) and the Kanawha River valley. However, many Virginia politicians wanted the minerals, timber and produce of those areas to instead ship through Richmond and reach the Atlantic through Norfolk, although the James River Canal required substantial maintenance and was never completed through the Appalachians to the Ohio River watershed. Thus, while the B&O reached Wheeling in 1853, political compromises meant the B&O would only reach Grafton to connect to Parkersburg on the Ohio River through a connection with the Northwestern Virginia Railroad which was completed in 1857. During the "Great Railway Celebrations of 1857", a large group of notables boarded the B&O in Baltimore, then transferred to steamboats that took them from Wheeling to Marietta, Ohio, where they boarded a railroad to Cincinnati, where after another celebration, they boarded the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, which brought them to St. Louis, Missouri, three days after they had started their journey. The B&O would only reach Charleston (at the confluence of the Kanawha and Elk Rivers) and ultimately Huntington (which was named after a major B&O investor) on the Ohio River more than a decade after the American Civil War and the creation of the state of West Virginia.

Early engineering

When construction began on the B&O in the 1820s, railroad engineering was in its infancy. Unsure exactly which materials would suffice, the B&O erred on the side of sturdiness and built many of its early structures of granite. Even the track bed to which the iron strap rail was affixed consisted of stone.

Though the granite soon proved too unforgiving and expensive for track, most of the B&O's monumental bridges have survived to this day, and many are still in active railroad use by CSX. Baltimore's Carrollton Viaduct, named in honor of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was the B&O's first bridge, and is the oldest railway bridge in the Americas still carrying trains (and the third oldest in the world, after the Skerne Bridge, Darlington, UK, of 1824–1825, and the Bassaleg Viaduct, Newport, UK, of 1826). The Thomas Viaduct at Relay, Maryland, was the longest bridge in the United States upon its completion in 1835. It also remains in use. The B&O made extensive use of the Bollman iron truss bridge design in the mid-19th century. Its durability and ease of assembly aided faster railroad construction.

As the B&O built the main line west to Parr's Ridge, near Mount Airy, Maryland, it had limited information about the capabilities of steam locomotives; at the time, the line had three, the York, Atlantic, and the Franklin. When planning the extension to Sandy Hook, Maryland, and then Harpers Ferry, the company was uncertain if the engines' metal wheels would grip the metal rails sufficiently to pull a train up to the top of the ridge. The railroad decided to construct two inclined planes, one on each side of the ridge, along which teams of horses, and perhaps steam-powered winches, would assist pulling the trains uphill. The planes, about a mile long on each side, quickly proved an operational bottleneck. Before the decade of the 1830s ended, the B&O built a 5.5-mile-long (8.9 km) alternate route that became known as the Mount Airy Loop. The planes were quickly abandoned and forgotten, though some artifacts survive to the present.

First telegraph line

In 1843, Congress appropriated $30,000 for construction of an experimental 38-mile (61 km) telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore along the B&O's right-of-way. The B&O approved the project with the agreement that the railroad would have free use of the line upon its completion. An impressive demonstration occurred on May 1, 1844, when news of the Whig Party's nomination of Henry Clay for U.S. president was telegraphed from the party's convention in Baltimore to the Capitol Building in Washington. On May 24, 1844, the line was officially opened as Samuel F. B. Morse sent his famous words, "What hath God wrought", from the B&O's Mount Clare station to the Capitol by telegraph.

Innovations

Contrary to legend, the B&O was not the first chartered railroad in the United States; John Stevens obtained a charter for the New Jersey Railroad in 1815. The B&O was, however, the first company to operate a locomotive built in America, with the Tom Thumb in 1829. It built the first passenger and freight station (Mount Clare in 1829) and was the first railroad to earn passenger revenues in December 1829, and publish a timetable on May 23, 1830. On Christmas Eve 1852, the B&O line was completed between Baltimore and the Ohio River near Moundsville, West Virginia.

Conflicts in the early years

Partial government ownership caused some operational problems. Of the thirty members on its board of directors, twelve were elected by shareholders, while eighteen were appointed either by Maryland or the Baltimore City Council. Many had conflicting interests: the directors appointed by the state and city desired low fares and all construction to be funded from corporate revenues, while the directors elected by shareholders desired greater profits and dividends. These conflicts became more intense in the 1850s after the completion of the C&O Canal, which brought additional competition to the B&O. In 1853, after being nominated by large shareholder and director Johns Hopkins, John W. Garrett became president of the B&O, a position he would hold until his death in 1884. In the first year of his presidency, corporate operating costs were reduced from 65 percent of revenues to 46 percent, and the railroad began distributing profits to its shareholders.

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

The B&O played a major role, and got national attention, in the response to abolitionist John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia), in October 1859. Black porter Hayward Shepherd, to whom there is a monument in Harpers Ferry, was the first man killed; stationmaster Fontaine Beckham, who was also the town's mayor, was killed the next day. Raiders had cut the telegraph line, and stopped the 1:30 am Wheeling to Baltimore express, but after several hours the train was allowed to continue and at the first station with a working telegraph (Monocacy) the conductor sent a telegram to B&O headquarters. After confirming from the Martinsburg station (via Wheeling, because of the cut telegraph line) that the report was not a hoax, Garrett telegraphed President James Buchanan, the Secretary of War, the Governor of Virginia, and Maryland Militia General George Hume Steuart about the insurrection in progress. The B&O made its rolling stock available to the military. At 3:20 pm a train left Washington Depot with 87 U.S. Marines and two howitzers, and a 3:45 p.m. train from nearer Frederick, Maryland, carried three Maryland militia companies under Col. Edward Shriver. These trains stopped before the bridge at Sandy Hook, Maryland (end of the line before the bridge was built), and troops continued across the bridge on foot. Soon Garrett's Master of Transportation William Prescott Smith left Baltimore City, together with Maryland Gen. Charles G. Egerton Jr. and the Second Light Brigade, which train also picked up the Marines on the federal troop train at the junction in Relay, Maryland. All awaited Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart, who had received orders from the Secretary of War to retake Harpers Ferry and capture the insurgent abolitionists, which they quickly did. Garrett reported with evident relief the next day that aside from the cut telegraph line, which was quickly repaired, there had been no damage to any B&O track, equipment, or facilities.

The government of Maryland published in a book the many telegrams sent by B&O employees and management during the raid.

American Civil War

At the outset of the Civil War, the B&O possessed 236 locomotives, 128 passenger coaches, 3,451 rail cars and 513 miles (826 km) of rail road, all in states south of the Mason–Dixon line, as Garrett had noted before the war began. Although many Marylanders had Southern sympathies, Garrett and Hopkins supported the Union. The B&O became crucial to the Federal government during the Civil War, being the main rail connection between Washington, D.C., and the northern states, especially west of the Appalachian mountains.

However, its initial problem became Lincoln's first Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, a major stockholder in the rival North Central Railroad, which received long haul freight destined for Baltimore from the rival Pennsylvania Railroad. Furthermore, the Pennsylvania Railroad and other investors sought permission to construct rail lines which threatened the B&O's monopolies on the Washington Branch (between Relay and Washington DC) and westward through Cumberland, Maryland. Raids and battles during the war also cost the B&O substantial losses, many never indemnified. Master of Transportation Prescott Smith kept a diary during the war years, describing incidents such as the June 1861 derailment of a 50 car coal train, which plunged into a ravine after a bridge was destroyed (the wreckage burned for months and melted the metal coal hoppers), as well as later ironclad trains (one only disabled by an artillery shell piercing the boiler).

On April 18, 1861, the day after Virginia seceded from the Union, Virginia militia seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, which was also an important work station on the B&O's main westward line. The following day, Confederate rioters in Baltimore attempted to prevent Pennsylvania volunteers from proceeding from the North Central Railway's Bolton station to the B&O's Mount Clare station, and Maryland's governor Hicks and Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown ordered 3 North Central and 2 Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (PW&B) bridges destroyed to prevent further federal troop movements through (and riots in) the city. Soon B&O president John Work Garrett received letters from Virginia's Governor John Letcher telling the B&O to pass no federal troops destined for any place in Virginia over the railroad, and threatening to confiscate the lines. Charles Town's mayor also wrote, threatening to cut the B&O's main line by destroying the long bridge over the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, and Garrett also received anonymous threats. Thus he and others asked Secretary of War Cameron to protect the B&O as the national capitol's main westward link. Cameron instead warned Garrett that passage of any rebel troops over his line would be treason. The Secretary of War agreed to station troops to protect the North Central, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and even the PW&B, but flatly refused to help the B&O, his main competition.

Westward by merger

A steel and stone bridge was built across the Ohio River between Bellaire, Ohio, and Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1871, connecting the B&O to the Central Ohio Railroad, which the B&O had leased starting in 1866. This provided a direct rail connection to Columbus, Ohio, and the lease marked the beginning of a series of expansions to the west and north.

Other railroads included in the B&O were:

Northwestern Virginia Railroad from 1865

Winchester and Potomac Railroad and Winchester and Strasburg Railroad from 1867. This pair of lines connected with the B&O at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and constituted the only significant B&O trackage in present-day Virginia.

Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad leased through the Central Ohio in 1869

Hempfield Railroad, bought on May 1, 1871. The company was reorganized as the Wheeling, Pittsburg, and Baltimore on May 3, 1871. The subsequent acquisition of the Pittsburgh Southern enabled a direct Pittsburgh to Wheeling connection.

Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad from 1871. This was the B&O entry into Pittsburgh, overcoming the denial of a Pennsylvania charter to the B&O.

Somerset and Cambria Railroad from 1879

Buffalo Railroad from 1880

Pittsburgh Southern Railroad acquired 1883. Originally a narrow-gauge railroad, it was converted to standard gauge and renamed the Baltimore & Ohio Short Line.

West Virginia and Pittsburgh Railroad from 1890

Columbus and Cincinnati Midland Railroad leased through the Central Ohio in 1890

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

As a result of poor national economic conditions in the mid-1870s following the Panic of 1873, the B&O attempted to reduce its workers' wages. After a second reduction in wages was announced in the same year, workers began the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Striking workers would not allow any of the trains, mainly freight trains, to roll until the third wage cut was revoked. West Virginia Governor Henry M. Mathews sent in state militia units to restore train service but the soldiers refused to fire on the strikers. The strike spread to Cumberland, and when Maryland Governor John Lee Carroll attempted to put down the strike by sending the state militia from Baltimore, riots broke out resulting in 11 deaths, the burning of parts of Camden station, and damage to several engines and cars. The next day workers in Pittsburgh staged a sympathy strike that was also met with an assault by the state militia; Pittsburgh then erupted into widespread rioting. The strike ended after federal troops and state militias restored order.

New lines in Maryland

In 1866 the B&O began constructing the Metropolitan Branch west out of Washington, which was completed in 1873 after years of erratic effort. Before this line was laid, rail traffic west of Washington had to travel first to Relay or Baltimore before joining the main line. The line cut a more or less straight line from Washington to Point of Rocks, Maryland, with many grades and large bridges. Upon the opening of this line, through passenger traffic was rerouted through Washington, and the Old Main Line from Point of Rocks to Relay was reduced to secondary status as far as passenger service was concerned. The Washington to Gaithersburg section of the Met Branch was double-tracked during 1886–1893. Rebuilding in the early 20th century and complete double-tracking of the branch by 1928 increased capacity; the "branches" became the de facto mainline, though the Old Main Line was retained as a relief route.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) outmaneuvered the B&O to acquire the B&O's northern connection, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, in the early 1880s, cutting off the B&O's access to Philadelphia and New York. The state of Maryland had stayed true to its implicit promise not to grant competing charters for the Baltimore/Washington line, but when a charter was granted in 1860 to build a line from Baltimore to Pope's Creek in southern Maryland, lawyers for the Pennsylvania RR picked up on a clause in the unfulfilled charter allowing branches up to 20 miles (32 km) long, from any point and in any direction. The projected route, passing through what is now Bowie, Maryland, could have a "branch" constructed that would allow service into Washington. The Pennsylvania picked up the charter through the agency of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad and in 1872 service between Baltimore and Washington began. (See Pope's Creek Subdivision.) At the same time, the PRR outmaneuvered the B&O and took control of the Long Bridge across the Potomac River into Virginia, the B&O's connection to southern lines.

In response, the B&O chartered the Philadelphia Branch in Maryland and the Baltimore and Philadelphia Railroad in Delaware and Pennsylvania and built a parallel route, finished in 1886. The 10th president, Charles F. Mayer, spearheaded the development of the Baltimore Belt Line, which opened in 1895, and recruited engineer Samuel Rea to design it. This belt line connected the main line to the Philadelphia Branch without the need for a car ferry across the Patapsco River, but the cost of constructing the Howard Street Tunnel drove the B&O to bankruptcy in 1896.

The 20th century

Following its emergence from bankruptcy, control of the B&O was acquired by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1901, though the two kept separate corporate identities. A rising young PRR Vice President, Leonor F. Loree, was appointed president. Loree shared the Pennsy management's belief in infrastructure and the B&O at that time needed some of that. New classes of engines were built to haul longer, heavier trains faster. The Old Main Line was reworked, sections of the original right-of-way cut off by the straightening of curves and replacement of old, weight-restricted bridges with newer, heavier bridges. Most of Loree's work on the B&O physical plant remains evident today. Many iron and steel bridges on the railroad were replaced with stone (Pennsy preferred stone to the preference of the Reading and Lackawanna Railroad for concrete). With the adoption of anti-trust legislation in 1906, the relation between the two companies was severed.

The railroad's passenger numbers were at a disadvantage with the railroad's major competitor in the northeast, the Pennsylvania Railroad. That railroad had a tunnel into Manhattan, thus carrying passengers directly into New York City. The B&O had no tunnel rights, and its New York City market trains actually terminated at the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal in Jersey City. From Philadelphia to Jersey City the B&O traveled over Reading Railroad tracks to Bound Brook and there joining Central Railroad of New Jersey tracks to Jersey City. Passengers rode CNJ ferries or B&O busses to Manhattan. Suffering from its weaker market position from Baltimore to New York, the B&O discontinued all passenger service north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958. One day later, the railroad had declared itself fully dieselized.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway took financial control of the B&O in 1963. On May 1, 1971, Amtrak had taken over all of the remaining non-commuter routes of the B&O. The B&O already had a controlling interest in the Western Maryland Railway. In 1973 the three railroads were brought together under one corporate identity, the Chessie System, although they continued to operate as separate railroads. In 1980 the Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries, a holding company that owned the Seaboard Coast Line, the Louisville & Nashville, the Clinchfield, and the Georgia Railroad, agreed to form CSX Corporation. SCL Industries was renamed the Seaboard System Railroad (SBD) in 1983, the same year that the Western Maryland Railway was completely absorbed into the B&O. SBD was renamed CSX Transportation (CSX) in 1986. On April 30, 1987, the B&O's corporate existence ended when it was absorbed into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, which merged into CSX Transportation on August 31 of that year.

Named passenger trains

The B&O's named passenger trains included:

Abraham Lincoln (1935–77); continues today as Amtrak's Lincoln Service, connecting Chicago with St. Louis.

Ambassador (1930–64); connected Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.

Blue Ridge Limited (1934–49); connected Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.

Capitol Limited (1923–71); connected Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. In 1981, Amtrak's Capitol Limited resumed service on the route, albeit with a different route west of Pittsburgh.

Chicago Night Express (1912–1956)

Cincinnatian (1947–1971)

Cleveland Night Express (1915–1962)

Columbian (1931–1964)

Daylight Speedliner (1956–1963)

Diplomat (1930–1961, 1964–1968)

Fort Pitt Limited

Great Lakes Limited

Marylander (1938–1956)

Metropolitan Special (1919–1971)

National Limited (1925–1971)

New York Night Express

Night Express (1960–1967)

Pittsburgh 79

Legacy

When CSX established the B&O Railroad Museum as a separate entity from the corporation, it donated some of the former B&O Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore, including the roundhouse, to the museum.

Baseball fans at the Baltimore Orioles' current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, see the Baltimore & Ohio Warehouse at Camden Yards over the right-field wall.

Locomotive roster

The B&O acquired locomotives and cab units built by these companies:

Electro-Motive Diesel

Baldwin Locomotive Works

Lima Locomotive Works

Fairbanks-Morse

Heritage units

In 2021, CSX repainted three ex Amtrak EMD F40PHs into an honorary B&O scheme: CSX 1, CSX 2 and CSX 3.

In May 2023, GE ES44AH unit #1827 entered service, being repaired and painted at CSX shops in Waycross, GA under the honorary B&O scheme similar to that of the three F40PH locomotives. It is CSX's first heritage unit.