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Scenes of the B&O Railroad. Decorative title page for Ele Bowen, Rambles in the Path of the Steam-Horse, 1855. 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.
1830 – The first public railway in the United States, the B&O, opened with 23 miles of track, with mostly hardwood rail topped with iron. The steam locomotive, Tom Thumb, was designed and built by Peter Cooper for the B&O, the first American-built steam locomotive. Trials of the locomotive began on the B&O that year.
It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S. [3] [4] The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, and retains 40 acres of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops ...
For the immediate time being, "B&O trains continued to run, with many interruptions and only with the consent of Virginia." [3] Colonel Jackson realized that Harper's Ferry held not only important arms production factories, but was a choke-hold on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and key telegraph trunk lines connecting Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. to ...
B&O's Martinsburg Shops, circa 1858. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) was founded on February 28, 1827. [4] On May 21, 1842, the first steam locomotive arrived in Martinsburg and, later that same year, November 10, the first passenger train. [4] The first roundhouse complex was constructed during 1848–1850.
A steel Pratt truss and plate girder bridge was built in 1894 to carry the B&O Valley Line (now the CSX Shenandoah Subdivision) toward Winchester, Virginia, along the Shenandoah River. This was complemented in 1930–1931 with a deck plate girder bridge that carried the B&O Main Line (now the CSX Cumberland Subdivision) to Martinsburg, West ...
Along with buildings, the district includes the infrastructure associated with the building of the railroad in an urbanizing environment, such as the channelizing of Tuscarora Creek and a variety of culverts, underpasses and retaining walls. Significant buildings include, apart from the roundhouse/shop complex, the B. & O. Railroad station and ...
The name Tom Thumb is forever associated with the B&O, as the first steam locomotive built in the United States for an American railroad. It was built strictly as a demonstrator, but it was succeeded by a series of similar locomotives (the " Grasshoppers " and the "Crabs") designed by Ross Winans , the first head of motive power on the railroad ...