From the B&O Railroad Museum...

World War II Instructional Document Acquired

2012-02-13T10:42:00.000-05:00

An interesting document has made its way in to the museum library titled “Orientation Talk for Incoming Replacements” and gives a glimpse of the life of American Soldiers on their way to fight in Europe during World War II. Although there is no date on the document it appears to have been used in the winter 1945. The statement was read to soldiers on board transport ships before docking at Le Havre, France which was one of the larger ports used by the Allies. In the document, it gives the incoming soldiers an idea of what the conditions of the railroads are and how to stay out of trouble.

First, an understanding of the replacement system the Army used in World War II is helpful to understand the men that are in these ships. At the beginning of the war, the Generals thought it would be better to replace casualties with individual soldiers and they could learn from the veterans in the units they were sent. Replacement Depots were set up in Europe and when a unit needed replacements, a group was sent to that unit. The problem was the replacements were not liked by the older men and were shunned and some never really belonged to the unit. The replacements also had no sense of camaraderie or history of that unit. It was not a good system. Many thought it would be better to replace whole units at a time since they would have trained together and become a cohesive unit. Unfortunately, the Generals stuck with the replacement system and most units suffered from low morale and bad performance because of it.


40 and 8

The announcement starts with a welcome to the European Theater and letting them know where they were headed. They then described the trains and railroads they’d be traveling on. Soldiers would be housed in wooden boxcars called “40 and 8’s” which were French rail cars that could hold 40 men or 8 horses. These had been around since before World War I. You can see an example of a 40 and 8 in the Museum’s Roundhouse. They were told there would only be 18 to 25 men in a car and would be provided a stove for heat and cooking and also extra blankets. There would be rations in the cars and they would get fresh hot meals at wayside stops.

Next was a paragraph on the dangers of the black marketers in Europe. All American money was being collected from them and would be given back later. All kinds of goods from food to cigarettes were being stolen and resold at higher prices. They were warned that “Every MP in Europe is watching for black marketers. Don’t take a chance.”

And the last was a health warning. The men were encouraged to take care of their feet in the cold European winter. They were asked to take off their boots at night and to massage there feet to keep blood flowing to the feet. Many men got frostbite by not paying attention to their feet.

It is amazing that this document has survived 60+ years in such a great condition. I’d love to know its story too. Did the radio operator on board save it? Did someone grab it before the shop was decommissioned? That is what makes history so enjoyable. You never know what is around the corner or in your library.

Travis Harry

Director of Operations and Volunteers

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad: Old Main Line

2012-02-07T11:17:00.000-05:00

Westbound CSX train rolling by Ellicott City

The second most frequently asked question at Ellicott City Station is, “Do trains still come by here?” Yes, freight trains still do roll by just like they have for over 180 years.

Construction of the railroad began with a grand groundbreaking celebration in Baltimore on July 4, 1828. Since no one had built a railroad through such difficult territory before, construction proved very costly. Civil engineers had to invent new techniques as they built west, such as using wooden crossties instead of stone sills to lay the rails. The line reached Ellicott's Mills in

May 1830.

In 1835, the B&O opened the Washington Branch to provide service to the nation’s capital. The line being built to Wheeling then became known as the Main Stem. After 24½ years of difficult labor and litigation, the Main Stem finally opened for service to Wheeling on January 1, 1853.

In 1873, the B&O completed the Metropolitan Branch northwest from Washington to join the Main Stem at Point of Rocks, MD. The section of the Main Stem between Relay and Point of Rocks then became known as the Old Main Line. It is still in use today as the Old Main Line Subdivision by CSX Transportation freight trains.

The original route the line followed caused many operational issues later on. At the time the route was surveyed, steam power was still in its infancy. The directors of the B&O chose to go with horse drawn cars, which were small and lightweight. As the horses gave way to steam locomotives in the mid 1830’s, it became apparent that the tight curves of the line would be problematic. As traffic increased, locomotives and the cars they pulled became larger and unable to safely run on the line. Over the years, the track was relocated in many areas to allow higher speeds and safer operation.

In the early 1900’s, the B&O began a major reconstruction project. Several tunnels were bored through the granite hills of the Patapsco Valley to provide a modern track alignment. The section in Ellicott City is still in the original surveyed location.

CSX continues the traditions of the B&O railroad. Coal is still transported from mines in West Virginia to Baltimore to be loaded on ships for export. If you travel through Baltimore on I95 and I895, just outside of the north tunnel portals is one of the coal piers. Trains consisting of special cars called auto racks carry new automobiles and trucks from factories in the Midwest to distribution yards in Baltimore and Pennsylvania. Near the north side of the I895 steel bridge is one of the Baltimore auto unloading yards. And mixed freight trains carrying all kinds of products continue to pass through Ellicott City in both directions. Today, most freight trains do not operate on a fixed schedule. A train could appear at any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Pioneer outside the station

On display at Ellicott City Station is a replica of the Pioneer, a small wooden car that would be pulled by one horse at a time when the line first opened in back in 1830. If you’re lucky, you might get to see a 20,000 ton coal train pulled by several locomotives, producing over 12,000 horsepower rumbling by! Or one of the many other trains that pass thorough. We just don’t know when the next one might be.

(To answer the #1 FAQ, restrooms are in the Gift Shop!)

Chessie: Graphic Renditions

2012-01-24T13:30:00.001-05:00

Rush Loving, Jr., recent author of the work; The Men Who Loved Trains recently donated to the B&O Railroad Museum three graphic renditions of Chesapeake & Ohio Railway and, later, Chessie System Railroad’s iconic “Chessie.” Seems there was an attempt to resurrect the beloved railroad mascot in the 1980’s. Here is Mr. Loving’s letter to me and the images that he contributed to the museum’s collection.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

January 4, 2012

Dear Courtney,

Three mounted logos of Chessie that I gave the museum have an interesting background.

Back in the early 1980’s when the Chessie and SCL merged Chessie the cat was dropped as a corporate logo. It had been the C&O’s emblem since the 1930’s, and as you know it was one of the most venerable and best-loved corporate symbols in America.

Around 1990, Thomas E. Hoppin, who was CSX’s vice president for corporate communications, kept musing about the loss of Chessie. The company had an extremely strong logo it was not using. I was Hoppin’s consultant, so he had me get together with Irv Gravatt of Beatley and Gravatt, CSX’s ad agency, and work with him on some ideas for an updated logo. Irv and I met periodically over two or three months. We’d discuss concepts and he would go back and have one of his designers develop them.

Finally we had about a dozen different versions of the logo and of Chessie. Tom had instructed us to consider making Chessie tougher. Some of the railroaders down in Jacksonville had criticized the cat as too warm and fuzzy. Something not so close to the family hearth might be what we needed, Tom suggested.

Our versions ranged from the traditional Chessie to one that was tough like a tom cat and one at the far end of the spectrum that looked like an alley cat. Irv and I figured the railroaders were bound to accept one of them.

But we were wrong.

Tom narrowed the group to the three finalists that I gave the museum. As you can see, they cover every personality Chessie might have. But Jacksonville turned them all down. We never knew precisely why, but the railroad was being forced to cut costs down there while trying to get enough money to maintain and modernize some of the railroad. Printing new stationery and painting new logos on locomotives to them might be an unnecessary expense.

When the three designs were sent back to Tom I asked him if I could have them, and he graciously agreed.

Model Trains at Mt.Clare: A Tradition

2012-01-06T10:22:00.001-05:00

The closing of the Museum’s 2011 annual Holiday Festival of Trains, the biggest and most well attended EVER, continues a long-standing tradition at Mt. Clare initiated by the Public Relations Department of the B&O Railroad in 1936. In the first issue of Model Craftsmen Magazine for 1936 the B&O Railroad announced an “O” gauge “Royal Blue Model Contest” in order to help promote their signature train which operated between Washington D.C. and New York. For the princely sum of $1.00, the magazine offered a set of ¼ scale drawings of the Royal Blue locomotive “Lord Baltimore” and several types of passenger cars. This information was supplemented by a series of articles describing seats, lighting fixtures and other interior and exterior components for the modeler. Out of some 200 contestants only five submitted completed models for judging-a testament to the complexity of the project. The winner, chosen in March 1937, was Fletcher G. Speed, an automobile mechanic from New Rochelle, N.Y. who said he spent 30 days planning the project and over 1,500 hours completing it. The prize was $500.00 and the donation of the winning model to the Smithsonian Institution (who still holds the winning model in their collections today

This little marketing scheme drew enough attention to provide the Public Relations Department with an incentive to continue a model railroad program as a marketing tool. A large portable “O” gauge layout was constructed by the employees of the Mt. Clare Shops for use in the contest at the Smithsonian. The layout was rebuilt in 1941, including a full set of shipping crates, after which it traveled throughout many communities along the B&O’s right of way. During WWII the layout was displayed in veteran’s hospitals and used for training in the Army’s Transportation School. During the holiday season of 1944 this “O” gauge layout resided in the lobby of the Baltimore National Bank in support of War Bond sales. At War’s end it decorated the Howard Street Hutzler’s Department Store in downtown Baltimore for the holiday shopping season. Ultimately this large-scale layout made its way to the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. where it was placed on permanent loan. Refurbished, updated and expanded over the years-this layout still makes an annual appearance every holiday season in the downtown Cincinnati lobby of Cinergy (formerly Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company).

Engineers, draftsmen, pattern makers, painters and electricians who worked for the B&O at Mt. Clare all participated in a growing B&O Railroad model program which produced portable model railroad layouts in “O” gauge, “S” Gauge and “HO” gauge. These layouts, as a part of a well planned public relations program, were displayed all over Baltimore and throughout the B&O’s operating territory to the delight of thousands each year. In 1946, the B&O Railroad Public Relations Department issued sets of scale drawings of some of its most famous locomotives and cars just for modelers. Ultimately 46 sheets of scale drawings of both historic and modern (at the time) locomotives, tenders, passenger cars, freight cars and a caboose were printed and offered for sale to the public. A stationary “HO” layout was produced shortly after the opening of the B&O Transportation Museum at Mt. Clare in 1953. On exhibit year round the Museum now boasts a stationary state-of-the-art “HO” gauge model layout and an expansive permanent “G” gauge outdoor garden railroad.

Models, toy trains, contests, and the holidays-a tradition begun by the B&O Railroad’s marketing executives in 1936 is still alive and well at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum today. Our annual Holiday Festival of Trains offers children of all ages a glimpse into the world of miniature railroading. With various gauges and creative layouts; model and toy train displays scheduled throughout the season represent the largest assemblage of train gardens in the region.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

For more information: Dornette, William H.L., Scale Modeling and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad: A Unique Venture in Promoting Rail Transportation via the Medium of Model Railroading. (Baltimore, 2000). This publication includes the 46 scale drawings created by the B&O Railroad Public Relations Department along with a history of the modeling program. Available on-line or in the Museum Store.

Also check out our Television Channel for the corresponding episode. December 2011

B&O - Did You Know?

2011-12-21T10:11:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while this museum director gets to do a little history and in my travels around the Museum and in the collections I pop a note into a file, or copy an article or memoir of interest. In this blog article I thought I’d share some random fun facts about the B&O I’ve garnered over time. So, in the interest of entertainment, growing your knowledge another smidgeon, treating myself to a venue in which to share a story or two, and giving you something to file in your “did you know?” folder, here we go;

The first mile of track laid by the B&O from Mt. Clare (now part of the Museum’s right of way) follows the same path as a 17^th century Indian trail, later a Colonial highway. Charles Carroll, Barrister, the builder of Mount Clare mansion oriented his new home in 1756 facing this Colonial highway (now facing the Museum’s railroad tracks) with a carriage path to his front door. Across this venerable road traveled George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee and Rochambeau’s great army on their way to defeat Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia.
During the Spanish-America War the U.S. Army took extreme measures to ensure the protection of the major east coast ports against Spanish fleets in the Atlantic. In May 1898, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commandeered the B&O Railroad’s tugboat Transfer, fitted it with a temporary derrick and used the railroad’s tug to lower over 100 explosive submarine mines into Baltimore’s harbor.
In the first quarter of the 20^th century the B&O Public Relations Department constructed a number of model train layouts in “O” scale, “S” scale and “HO” scale designed as traveling exhibits promoting the railroad. These layouts were built by the employees of the B&O’s Mt. Clare shops. The “O” gauge traveling model was constructed in 1936. Beginning in 1946, this layout made annual holiday appearances in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company’s headquarters. In 1969, the railroad and the utility company worked out a long term loan relationship and, although upgraded and improved, the B&O Railroad’s 1936 vintage model railroad can still be seen in downtown Cincinnati on 4^th Street at the Cinergy (former Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co.) headquarters each December.
It is widely known that Johns Hopkins was a principal shareholder in the B&O Railroad and that the bequest of his B&O stock brought both the University and Hospital into existence. As a result of Hopkins’ close relationship with the railroad B&O Presidents maintained a seat on the Johns Hopkins board of trustees. That tradition continues today with the current Chairman and CEO of CSX-the successor to the B&O.
The B&O was the first railroad to test the use of an electrically operated locomotive on April 29, 1851. Invented by Dr. Charles Grafton Page, electrical current was generated by a hand cranked electro-magnetic device.
The infant B&O Railroad established its headquarters in 1829 at the corner of Pratt and Poppleton Streets in Baltimore. Poppleton Street was named for Thomas H. Poppleton a noted cartographer who was hired by the City Board of Commissioners in 1812 “to survey new boundaries, lay out streets, select lots for public uses and harmonize street names…” Pratt Street was named for Charles Pratt (1719-1794) an English lawyer, judge and advocate of civil liberties. Charles Pratt was the first English noble to hold the title Earl of Camden…hmmm now where does that lead us?

And there you have it! A short list of somewhat useless but entertaining facts that will, most assuredly, elicit a gaze of wonderment at some upcoming holiday party! Oh…one more thing: did you know that the B&O Railroad Museum is the largest private non-profit railroad museum in the world?

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a bright New Year.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Discovery: Coronation Scot

2011-11-09T13:12:00.009-05:00

Paul Rickets, Archival Assistant
B&O Railroad Museum

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum's small object collection consists of thousands of items ranging in size from station signs to uniform buttons. Some of the most prolific artifacts lining the Mount Clare storage shelves are railroad lanterns. Hundreds of them, in all manner of shapes, sizes and colors, from many different railroads. Amongst these rows of mostly standard oil and kerosene lanterns are a handful of distinctly unusual examples including an art-deco style lamp with fading red and gold paintwork. During a recent inventory of the Small Objects Collection it became apparent that this was one of two lamps in the archives that came off of the British “Coronation”, a Princess Coronation Class locomotive which toured the US in 1939. This discovery highlights just one of several significant interactions between the B&O and various British railway companies; reaching right back to the very beginnings of the commercial rail industry, but in itself makes a compelling historical story.

The British Princess Coronation Class locomotives were built by the London, Midland and Scottish (LMS) Railway Company at their works in Crewe, UK. Five stream-lined locomotives were completed in 1937 with number 6220 “Coronation” being named for the Coronation of King George VI in that same year. During its trials the “Coronation” made headlines when it broke the world land speed record, reaching 114 mph. Although built by the LMS, these locomotives were painted in the Blue and Silver livery of the Caledonian Railway, which the LMS had absorbed in 1923. Built to pull the new “Coronation Scot” service, they were painted to match existing rolling stock and ran from London to Glasgow, completing the journey in six hours.

A second batch of locomotives were built in 1938, including 6229 “Duchess of Hamilton”. Unlike the first batch these locomotives received the traditional LMS livery of crimson-lake and gold. It is likely that by this time the LMS had decided to replace the aging Caledonian coaches with new ones branded in their own colors. To this end an initial set of articulated crimson and gold coaches were built to match the newer locomotives.

The LMS continued building Princess Coronation Class locomotives through WWII. With the dawning of the diesel era they were destined to become the most powerful steam locomotives built in the UK. Whilst the stream-lining arguably gave little, if any, benefit in terms of efficiency, it is easy to see why the first sets of these locomotives grabbed the public's imagination. Standing today in the Main Hall of the National Railway Museum in York, 6229 “Duchess of Hamilton” demands attention. Her aerodynamic, art-deco styling and bright crimson and gold livery, very much the vogue in the 1930's, makes her stand out among the many other locomotives in the museum. It must have been this mix of 1930's aesthetic and raw power that caught the eye of the organizers of the 1939 New York World's Fair, who invited the LMS to send the “Coronation” to the US.

The 1939 World's Fair was an opportunity for the LMS to show off its brand and engineering skills to the world. Rather than send the original 'Caledonian' branded “Coronation Scot” to the US, the LMS chose 6229 “Duchess of Hamilton” along with the only set of newly built articulated coaches, both of which were liveried in the company's traditional crimson and gold colors. The decision was also made to switch the names and numbers of the “Coronation” and the “Duchess of Hamilton” for the duration of the US tour, presumably to promote their flagship service under the LMS brand. In order to comply with US safety requirements for running on US railroads, the newly renamed “Coronation” made her way to Crewe to be fitted with an American bell, head lamp and buckeye coupling, as evidenced in this Pathe News clip.

In February 1939 the “Coronation Scot” was loaded on board the ship Belpamela at Southampton dock for a stormy six day sea voyage to Baltimore (see contemporary footage here). A 3,000 mile US Tour had been planned, starting in Baltimore and ending in New York at the World's Fair. The train was unloaded in Baltimore harbor (see contemporary news footage here) and then spent time receiving visitors at the B&O Railroad's historic Mount Clare Depot, which is now the site of the B&O Railroad Museum. The “Coronation Scot's” maiden trip in the US was to Washington D.C. Based on newspaper reports of the time she was a huge attraction (see contemporary news footage here). During her stay at Mount Clare the B&O Railroad's PR department took the opportunity to shoot numerous photographs of the train. These included images of her next to her B&O Railroad contemporary the Royal Blue, travelling over the Thomas Viaduct and alongside the first of the B&O diesel locomotives. Many of these images are now part of the B&O Museum's vast image collection. After spending several days in and around Baltimore, the “Coronation Scot” headed north through Pennsylvania and on to New York. During her tour she made several stops. According to the newspapers of the day, the tour was a great success. Some accounts suggest that she was visited by over 3,000,000 people during her travels.

Whilst the “Coronation Scot” toured the US, the political situation in Europe was rapidly deteriorating. After initial attempts at peace, Britain was forced to declare war on Germany in September 1939. With the threat of German warships and U-boats in the Atlantic, the LMS decided that it was too risky to ship the “Coronation Scot” back to the UK. The coaches were loaned to the US Military and spent the war as officers’ quarters. The “Coronation” itself was returned to the care of the B&O Railroad and stored at its Fell’s Point facilities in Baltimore. By 1942 the UK was in desperate need of locomotives to replenish war damaged units, and so the “Coronation” was shipped back to the UK. The coaches stayed in the US for the remainder of the war and were finally repatriated in 1946. On her return to the UK the “Coronation” and the “Duchess of Hamilton” once again exchanged names and numbers.

The “Duchess of Hamilton” was stripped of her stream-lining in 1947 to improve her overall efficiency. In 1948 she passed into British Rail ownership and changed her number to 46229. Something of a chameleon the “Duchess” was to end up being painted blue, Brunswick-green and maroon before she was retired in 1963. At this point she was bought by Billy Butlin, a Holiday Camp Millionaire, and used as a child's playground exhibit at his camp in Minehead. In 1976 Billy loaned the locomotive to the newly opened National Railway Museum, finally selling her to the museum in 1987. During her early years at the NRM the “Duchess of Hamilton” ran as the museum's flagship excursion train but stopped when her boiler certification ran out in 1996. In 2005 it was announced that her streamlining was to be restored after a successful appeal by the Railway Magazine and in May 2009 she was re-exhibited at the NRM in all her streamlined glory.

It is at this point that the connection between the B&O and the “Duchess of Hamilton” once again came to light. As an Englishman working in the B&O Museum Archives I have a strong interest in any B&O Railroad/UK connections. In July I made my first visit to the National Railway Museum in York, England. I already knew a little about the “Coronation Scot” but had only heard her name in context with her US tour, so was more than a little surprised when I discovered that the “Duchess of Hamilton”, on exhibit at the NRM, was the same locomotive that had visited the B&O in 1939. Furthermore, there was something familiar about the locomotives smoke box lamps.

On returning to the US, it did not take long to trace back through the Small Objects Collection and find the Art Deco lamp that I had been reminded of. It was almost identical to the ones on the restored “Duchess of Hamilton”. Following up this discovery with a curator at the NRM, it turned out that not only was this an original lamp from the “Duchess” but that during restoration engineers were unable to source an original lamp of this type to copy, so the lamp that the B&O has in its collection is most probably the only surviving one of its kind. Several weeks after this, we found a second LMS lamp, a tan colored one with a red lens which must have been the rear lamp of the coaches used on the “Coronation Scot”.

We have not as yet discovered the reason why the two lamps from the “Coronation Scot” ended up in the Museum’s collection. They could have been given to the B&O as a souvenir of the trains visit, or may have been left at Mount Clare by accident when the train was stripped for the journey back to the UK. Whatever the reason, the fact that these two significant items remained on the shelves at the B&O saved them from the ravages of the huge changes in the British railway system that occurred during and after the Second World War. They reach across the years to make a tangible connection between two long gone but historically significant Railroad Companies and two large modern Railroad Museums.

Royal Blue Open Golf Tournament

2011-11-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

On Monday, October 3, 2011 more than 100 individuals and representatives from companies and foundations that supported the B&O Railroad Museum’s Early Childhood Education Programs throughout 2011 gathered at Caves Valley Golf Club to celebrate the tremendous success of the fund raising effort and the excellence of the Museum’s programs. More than $180,000.00 was raised in 2011.

The Royal Blue Open was a spectacular Day of Recognition that featured a round of golf on the renowned course followed by a reception where our sponsors and supporters were recognized. To top off the day Caves Valley provided a top-notch dinner and wine pairing experience where our guests took a transcontinental “excursion” visiting food stations from Baltimore, Spokane, San Diego and New Orleans.

2011 B&O Railroad Museum

Early Childhood Education Sponsors

$25,000

PNC Bank

Whiting-Turner Contracting Company

$15,000

TESSCO Technologies

$10,000

Henry and Ruth Blaustein-Rosenberg Foundation

KO Public Affairs

Neuberger, Quinn, Gielen, Rubin and Gibber, P.A.

Robert and Janet Barnhill Family Foundation

T. Rowe Price Foundation

$6,000 to $9,999

Century Engineering

Roz & Marvin H. Weiner Family Foundation

$5,000-$5,999

DLA Piper

Ernst & Young, LLP

Exelon Corporation

Gross Mendelsohn Accountants & Advisors

McCormick & Company

Philips Hadco

SunTrust

$3,000-$4,999

BMW of Towson

Chesapeake Urology Associates

G. Dowell Schwartz

Helping Hands Real Estate

Kelly & Associates

$1,000-$2,000

BCT Architects

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield

Chesapeake Corporate Advisors

Constantine Commercial Construction

CSX Corporation

Deloitte

Gregory Farno

KPMG

Maury, Donnelly & Parr

Miles & Stockbridge

Pillar Innovations

Pricewaterhouse Coopers, LLP

Steve Banks

T. Brooks. Inc.

Workforce Tactix, Inc.

James & Mary Ross

Jerry & Denise Stone

Mariposa Child success Program

Radcliffe Jewelers

Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White

T. Rowe Price Group

Other Supporters and Friends

Canton Railroad Company

Clifton Gunderson

Ron Drucker & Lisa Ware

SC&H Group

Baltimore County Commission on Arts and Sciences

Constellation Energy Group

Douglass William List

Robert L. Gould & Family

The Nabit Foundation

2011 Board of Directors Early Childhood Education Development Committee

Robert Barnhill-Chair

Steve Banks

Greg Farno

Gino Gemignani

Tom Sand

Francis Smyth

The first place Gross winner of the tournament was Philips HADCO with participants Chris Hammelef, Carl Gallagher, David Fetterolf, and Eric Helwig. First Place Net winner was MHW Group with participants Mark Bolotin, Adam Bolotin, Herman Haksteen, and Matt Stalter. To view images of this event, click here.

Emerging Technology for National Defense

2011-11-04T11:08:00.004-04:00

Early Railroads and Military Strategy 1830-1848

Courtney B. Wilson, Executive Director

B&O Railroad Museum

Railroad technology had not advanced to the point that it was useful for military purposes until near the end of the Mexican War (1846-1848) yet early railroad entrepreneurs, citizens and government officials eyed the possibilities from its genesis.

The American Army did not particularly distinguish itself during the War of 1812 and, subsequently, political and military leaders became absorbed by problems of national defense in the ensuing decades. Inevitably, with the establishment of America’s first planned long distance railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio in 1827, military strategists began to view the endless possibilities of this new transportation system.

In the immediate years following the War of 1812, Congress began to appropriate funds for wagon roads, turnpikes and other sustainable ground transportation routes that may have commercial interests but also for the purpose of military transportation. As is common today, many a congressman raided the national treasury for infrastructure improvements in their home districts under this initiative.

Even before the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad proved that railroads were not the frivolous products of impractical visionaries, other railroad companies had been formed and city, state and federal governments were receiving requests for financial aid. With railroads popping up rapidly in the period 1830-35 and with no unanimity as to how the railroads would improve, or even serve, national defense every private and public railroad promoter was not shy in assuring the military necessity of their line no matter where it was located or what points on the landscape it connected.

As early as 1829 the directors of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company asked the federal government to subscribe to 2,500 shares of their company assuring that their efforts would anticipate a “higher benefit” for the “protective arm of the General Government” by the greater efficiency with which troops could be rushed across the country. (1)

The citizens of Adams County Illinois petitioned that a railroad be constructed between Buffalo, NY to a point on the Mississippi River eloquently stating how inexpensively troops and munitions could be transported and that those troops would reach the battleground “…presenting the spectacle of an Army fresh and fit for immediate action…” Similarly, the directors of the West Feliciana Railroad Company asked Congress to help build their line from St. Francisville, Louisiana to Woodville, Mississippi in exchange for a promise to transport military troops free of charge. (2)

Most of these early petitions were concerned only with the fortunes of a single company, however, on March 16, 1836 a mass meeting of citizens was held in Uniontown, Pennsylvania that was instigated by the Baltimore & Ohio to present a larger vision (and thus profit the Baltimore & Ohio) for national defense. Appropriate resolutions were unanimously adopted to favor federal aid to the Baltimore & Ohio whose company presented the best and nearest connection between the Atlantic seaboard and the West. The preamble states that the line was of the “…highest national importance, whether in reference to the mail, military or commercial operations of our country.” Other resolutions, more of a general character, envisioned a network of railroads traversing the Atlantic seaboard that would be “…superior to any system of fortifications.” This, one resolution stated, would be “…equally available for the repulsion of invasion from abroad and the suppression of insurrections at home.” Records of this meeting put forth the idea that, were such a system in place during the War of 1812 it would have “…saved the country from the mortification and disgrace of having its capital destroyed by hostile hands.” (3)

The War Department was well aware of the military and strategic use of railroads and some of the suggestions developed in the Uniontown meeting mirrored a report to Congress by Secretary of War Lewis Cass in 1836. That report acknowledged the phenomenal growth of the United States since the war of 1812, increased national security problems and suggested that the use of railroad transportation systems would enhance troop mobility and rapidity of deployment, provide for the efficient transport of arms, munitions and sustenance, and disable the ability of hostile navies to plunder coastal cities long before defensive tactics and troops could be rallied and brought to the front. (4)


Lewis Cass, Secretary of War

Of course the Secretary’s encouraging words inspired railroad promoters and profiteers to approach Congress for more and more support. In 1838 the Alabama, Florida and Georgia Railroad petitioned Congress for 500,000 acres of public land the sale of which would finance the completion of a railroad line from Pensacola, on the Gulf of Mexico, to Montgomery, Alabama on the Alabama River. Their principal argument was that this line would provide an “…economical defense of the maritime frontier on the Gulf of Mexico.” With strong support in the Senate, the House of Representatives sent the matter to Lieutenant Colonel J.G. Totten, chief of engineers for his opinion of the military importance of the proposed road. Totten, a graduate of West Point, had been working on coastal defense issues for the preceding 30 years. He concluded that the proposed Alabama, Florida and Georgia line would be a welcome contribution to the solution of southern coastal defense problems. Ultimately the proposal failed to gain support in the House of Representatives. (5)

J.G. Totten

Numerous proposals for new railroad lines were received all stating their strategic military purpose. The Selma & Tennessee Railroad, Alexandria & Falmouth Railroad, the Citizens of Detroit and others all recalled the embarrassing military performances of the War of 1812 in their proposals to Congress. Up until 1840, all of these proposals to Congress based on military importance made up a bundle of disjointed, personally profitable and self serving railroad projects that were not a part of any grand plan. In slightly more than a decade about 1,800 miles of track had been laid and while certain areas of the country like New England and the Mid-Atlantic region were fairly well served by a railroad network the remainder of the country, in particular the West and southern coastal regions were without.

The citizens of Uniontown, in their effort to assist the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, manifested a broader vision than most of their contemporaries but fell short of a new vision offered by General Edmund P. Gaines. A veteran of the War of 1812 and with decades of Army service on the frontier Gaines would offer the War Department a comprehensive plan for a national railroad system designed to enhance homeland defense. In 1831 he quietly launched a campaign to inform and convince the War Department that railroads embodied the future of military tactics. In 1838, he had developed his plan well enough to submit it to Washington. Unfortunately, Gaines had few friends in the Department and had often been at loggerheads with General Winfield Scott and other high ranking leaders throughout his career due his proclivity to criticize Departmental policies and action. His plan for the railroad system therefore received a less than warm reception. Convinced that the War Department had a vendetta against him he broke through the chain of authority and launched his proposal directly to Congress in 1840 by presenting a lengthy memorial outlining “…a system of national defense, and praying its adoption by Congress.” (6)

Edmund P. Gaines

In his proposal was a plan to design and construct seven railroad trunk lines radiating from Tennessee and Kentucky, the two most central states in the Union, to seven strategic locations on the frontier. One line would go from Lexington, Kentucky to Buffalo, New York with branches to Detroit, Albany and Boston; the second from Knoxville, Tennessee to Baltimore, Maryland with branches to Richmond, Virginia and Newbern, North Carolina; the third from Memphis to Charleston, South Carolina with branches to Milledgeville, Georgia and the Northeast coast of Florida; the fourth from Louisville to Mobile with a branch to Pensacola; the fifth from Lexington to New Orleans; the sixth from Memphis deep into Arkansas and the seventh from Albany, Indiana to St. Louis with branches to Chicago and the upper reaches of the Des Moines River. He supplemented this vision for a national railroad system with powerful coastal floating batteries, heavily armed and propelled by steam engines. This, he argued, would all but eliminate the need for standing coastal and interior fortifications.

Gaines asserted that the 600 miles of right of way he proposed would average $15,000.00 per mile of double track laid. If constructed by the U.S. Army the total cost would be approximately $64 million. A large investment, no doubt, but Gaines credibly illustrated that troops and munitions could be moved throughout he country in one tenth of the time and at one tenth of the expense under current conditions. He also argued that “…we shall save our citizen soldiers from what they usually deem the most irksome and insupportable afflictions and privations attending their tours of military service; we shall save them from long and tedious marches, and from still more painful separation from wife, children, friends and business.”

This system was calculated by Gaines meticulously right down to the salary of the labor of the lowest enlisted man required to construct the seven roads. Ending his memorial he made a passionate plea to Congress stating that he had previously been ignored and, even, snubbed by the War Department on many occasions prior. Within a week of his presentation he was immediately disillusioned when Congress referred his proposal right back to the Secretary of War J.R. Poinsett. (7)

Upon receipt of Gaines’ proposal, Poinsett replied “…with every respect to the gallant author…” he could hardly agree with any proposal that relegated the entire defense of the nation to a system of railroads and floating batteries. Congress laid aside Gaines’ ambitious scheme and, once again, centered its attention on individual railroads and their promoters to achieve a network that could be efficiently used by the military when required. Perhaps General Gaines made one fatal error in his proposal-despite his sour reputation inside the War Department, by proposing that his system of railroads and floating coastal batteries would eliminate the need for all coastal fortifications and garrisons.

During the next several years proposals by individual railroad companies continued to flood through Congresses doors almost all singing the same song by highlighting their strategic and economic importance for military strategy. In further assessments by the War Department up until and through the Mexican War the argument continued over whether the strategic use of railroad would replace or reduce the size and number of standing fortifications and coastal defense systems and little was accomplished.

While some transportation historians have dubbed the Mexican War America’s first ‘steamboat war” railroad networks and technology had advanced to the point that the military was able to utilize the system, not in the theater of war which was concentrated in the Southwest, but to transport troops from city centers to points where the great caravan of war gathered to move West. In March of 1846 the First Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, raised in Philadelphia, was able to move by train in relatively rapid fashion in order to join General Winfield Scott’s army in New Orleans. (8)


Winfield Scott

At the end of the War in 1848 and with a net gain of more than 500,000 square miles of former Mexican land, the United States at once had an uninterrupted passage to the Pacific. Railroad companies once consumed by petitioning Congress for financial aid in constructing relatively short lines with an argument for national defense now turned an eye to the embryonic concept of a transcontinental railroad. It would be another dozen years following the opening guns of the American Civil War before the railroads would make their mark in military strategy, troop and munitions movements and, even, as tools of destruction but it is clear that the military might of this emerging technology in the United States did not go unnoticed by the profiteers, politicians and citizens alike.

NOTES:

1. Memorials of the President and Directors of the South Carolina Canal & Railroad Company, Feb. 9, 1829 and January 3, 1830. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), SEN 20A-G10 and SEN 21A-G10.

2. NARA SEN 23A-G13, January 10, 1832

3. NARA SEN 24A-G15, March 28, 1836

4. House Executive documents, 24^th Congress, 1st Session, No. 243, pp. 17-18

5. Senate Journal, June 25, 1838 p. 493, and House Executive Documents, 25^th Congress, 3^rd Session, No. 198.

6. James W. Silvers, Edmund Pendleton Gaines and Frontier Problems, 1801-1849 (Nashville, 1935).

7. Memorial of Edmund P. Gaines Outlining a system of National Defense, March 6, 1840. NARA SEN 26A-G11

8. House Executive Documents, 32^nd Congress, 1st Session, no. 5, pp. 230-232

Derailed

2011-10-18T07:57:00.005-04:00


Anna Ella Carroll

“It will make our country the agent and carrier of the commerce of the world; and it becomes all classes of our country - all who regard its prosperity, all who regard the benefit to their children and their children’s children - to rally the railroad as the great highway of our national prosperity and greatness.” This sounds like a statement coming from a professional politician, which it did not, although it did come from someone who possessed a politician’s qualities. Said to have “a streak of vanity, an ‘imperious nature,’ and an ‘obsession for power and recognition,’” Anna Ella Carroll (1815-1894) was a cunning activist, writer, and servant of Lincoln’s government from a prominent Maryland family. One might not think that her views would exactly coincide with that of the “common” American of 1856, but on the prospect of a transcontinental railroad, she strongly expressed commonly held visions of the time - visions of what the railroad would bring to the American continent. Was she correct in her predictions?

In order to find out, let’s juxtapose said predictions with actual outcomes, beginning with her claim that “we can make our national [rail]road, which will convey us across the continent to the Bay of San Francisco in seven days.” This is something that would have been remarkable at a time when that journey, usually either around America in a boat or across the U.S. in wagons, was dangerous, months long, and uncomfortable - one only needs to look at the fate of the Donner Party, an 80 person group en route to California from the east coast that became a 41 person group half a year later without having reached its destination. Thus, higher speeds and safer, more comfortable travel would be gigantic improvements, but the hype and the reality suffered a disconnect. On the hype end, the Transcontinental Express proved in 1876 that the country could be crossed in 3.5 days, but everyday trains (particularly freight trains) didn’t make this sort of trip with such speed, or even half the speed. Weather (esp. snow and ice on the more northern routes) would sometimes cause seriously long delays. Other times the culprit would be the failure of telegraph lines or the sabotage of track by Native Americans, bands of marauders, or even other railroad companies, and when delays weren’t getting in the way, railroads still did their jobs inefficiently in the 19^th century. William Van Horne (1843-1915) made such an observation upon tracking nine freight cars, which took between 3 and 7 days each to travel 121 miles. Not only does this range suggest sporadic variations in speed, but Miss Carroll’s predictions imply that each train should have only taken about a quarter of a day. Such a phenomenon was not isolated to Mr. Van Horne’s experiences.

Here again, though, Murphy’s law kicks in - every solution breeds new (and usually unexpected) problems. Everything was faster and therefore ‘smaller’ but lower prices and ‘shorter’ distances became a sort of issue of the past. The new issue, less for travelers than producers and shippers, was the way in which railroads reorganized distance by means of money. It is important to realize that distance shrunk since rates systematically shrunk (between 1870 and 1885, rates on both the Central and Northern Pacific declined by about 66% in real dollars), but it’s just as important to pay attention to the unevenness of such a fall in rates. Let’s say Cornville and Cornopolis both ship corn to Retailtown. That rates fall between Cornville and Retailtown isn’t bad, per se, but if the rates between Cornopolis and Retailtown fall faster and further, then Cornville is put at a competitive disadvantage because, in terms of rates, it becomes more distant than Cornopolis. This was especially frustrating for the towns that drew the losing card, particularly because their fate was being decided by detached managers or, worse, financiers looking for personal gain at the expense of theirs. They were the first to realize that the railroads had the power to decide who succeeded in business and who failed, not only town by town but individual by individual, which was fine for the few that were favored, but bad for everyone else.

Speaking of individuals, the aristocrat Anna Ella Carroll predicted that “the poor man will be benefited more than the rich by this road [which will] stop the poor man from working for the pittance he now does. The manufacturer, also, by the increased freedom to commerce...will find himself better able to cope with the manufactures of Europe.” Unlike on the issue of speed, though, she almost completely missed the mark here. The first people to lose financially on railroads were the investors who, without any independent knowledge of or exposure to the railroad they invested in, trusted dishonest railroad owners and the newspapers that they secretly manipulated - The Sun was controlled by Isaac Bromley, The Star by Collis Huntington, The Stockholder by Jay Gould, the Financial Chronicle by whoever gave them “a reasonable share of advertising,” and reporters of the Associated Press by Richard Franchot and others who put them on their railroads’ payrolls.

The settlers suffered even more than the investors, though, having been brought in record numbers to the west on rails. In fact, between 1870 and 1890 the west’s citizen population increased threefold from about 1,281,000 to 3,864,000, with most of the region’s states and territories seeing huge increases - Nebraska’s population grew eightfold, Washington’s and Colorado’s ninefold. In fact, because the transcontinentals were built ahead of demand and raised property values in their immediate vicinities, they not only were responsible for luring settlers out there but also dictated where they would settle. As the Toronto Globe wrote, railroad managers had “a say in the existence of almost every town or prospective town...Individuals rarely have an opportunity of starting a town without their consent and cooperation.”


Railroad Through to the Pacific, Currier & Ives, 1870

In any case, many of the people who were lured out west became farmers, and yet there wasn’t a single year between 1884 and 1906 where the income of the average farmer exceeded his expenditures. Why? Not only because railroad marketing was able to convince the new farmers to take chances on settling arid land near the tracks, but also because such an increase in farming resulted in so much additional production that national and international demand was exceeded, which led to price drops in crops. Since prices went down, farmers needed to produce more to meet their costs, buy necessities and pay bills, but of course, the more they produced, the more prices dropped. Railroad workers were hurting too, illustrated by the high incidence of injury and death on the rails as well as by the constant struggles of brotherhoods and unions for better wages, restricted hours, and safety standards. Due to rash action, reversion to ‘vice,’ and occasional radicalism, most were seen negatively by the general public, convincing the transcontinental corporations that it was in their best interests to actively keep all of them, minus the porters and conductors, out of sight. Thus, people brought west to labor on the rails became wageworkers, “threatening, foreign, and degraded.”

These circumstances and others were not only individually and socially damaging, but caused the total personal per capita income “to fall in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming between 1880 and 1900.” It only rose with any degree of substantiality in the two poorest western states, Utah and New Mexico. This, combined with the fact that the west had a higher cost of living than any other region in the country, spelled economic hardship for the average individual there. The rails provided western settlers with benefits, of course, bringing them food, equipment, mail, and other goods. On top of that, the million plus that had left home before the age of the transcontinentals convinced that they’d never see or hear from their family again would now be able to do both. The telegraph became, as Miss Carroll, predicted, the new “the electric medium of exchange” across the country, and the rails turned into a means to get home for even the poorest of workers in the worst of times. It wouldn’t appear, however, that these few plusses outweighed the many minuses experienced by the ‘poor’ and ‘average’ westerner.

Others profited immensely though. In the last years of the 19^th century, when the Government finally settled their debt with the railroads, it collected, as Stephen Ambrose notes, “a total repayment of $167,746,490 on an initial loan of $64,623,512.” On top of this, the political ‘ethics’ of the day allowed for the Central Pacific’s copious ‘loans’ to a certain Senator Cole and 50,000 acres of land to a Senator Stewart, while the Union Pacific gave $20,000 each to the Republican and Democratic national committees. Not to be outdone, the Southern Pacific pumped $1 million into the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and even granted free stock to the Mexican leader Diaz as well as his officials and family members. And while these and more Government officials and organizations lined their pockets, Thomas and Collis Huntington, Thomas Scott, Jay Gould, Henry Villard, and the rest of the ‘Robber Baron’ financiers who controlled the railroads, despite their innumerable blunders, walked away with fortunes from their companies, which were by the 1890s falling left and right into receivership and failure.

Such ultimate failures had their seeds sown in the early days. Miss Carroll boasted that “we have, at least, twenty thousand miles of railway constructed in the United States, involving a capital of more than five hundred millions of dollars,” implying that she expected greater capital growth from the new transcontinentals, but it turns out that they neither existed upon or were built by capital. Instead they’d been constructed and run on credit, the result being a bonded debt of $416 million shared by the railroads in 1867, which grew to $5.055 billion in 1890, an almost unthinkable sum when a steak dinner cost about 25 cents. With such unceasing debt, railroads also managed to inspire the Credit Mobilier Scandal, which gave many Americans the feeling that their republic was rotting from corruption, and the Panics of 1873 and 1890, which were not only painful for railroads (From 1873-1875, 121 railroad companies defaulted with an outstanding bonded debt of $553 million dollars) but for everyone else too.

Miss Carroll didn’t foresee these fiscal negatives, though, only the fiscal positives. Impacted by the California Gold rush, as many Americans were at the time, she sought to secure it’s economic role with the railroad. “Consider how easy foreign cruisers and privateers could cut us off from this receipt of the essential element of our national vitality! The gold now comes to us over foreign seas, through foreign territory, and over a circuit of six thousand miles. In the event of war, whole fleets would interpose to take from us this arm of our strength....The railway would then protect us, and save all our commerce and territory from foreign aggression.” She failed to foresee that much of the gold that the railroads carried to the east coast would not stop there, though. Part of this was the fault of the railroads themselves, for when European investors began to get tired of funding unfinished transcontinentals constantly breaking their terms of agreement, gold began to flow to them across the Atlantic. It didn’t help that Europe moved to the gold standard and thus further increased its appetite for American gold.

What about other foreign trade, though? Perhaps that would be the real economic contribution of the transcontinentals to America - Miss Carroll certainly thought so. “The Pacific Railroad should be made to shorten and cheapen the transit route for the commerce of Europe and Asia,” she said, thus making “our country the agent and carrier of the commerce of the world.” Such a hope was immortalized by the first transcontinental freight train, which “carried in its hold an emissary of the Asian markets: a shipment of Japanese teas,” and materialized to an

extent. While it seems unimpressive that Asian trade rarely reached double digit percentages of a transcontinental’s business in any given year, the fact of the matter was that they did indeed accelerate, cheapen and increase trade with Asia.

The second part of Miss Carroll’s prediction did not come to fruition either, for the railroads soured European investors as mentioned, and a mission embarked upon by the U.S. government to shut Asians themselves out of the country entirely (with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1885 Foran Act, and the 1892 Geary Act) soured Asian economic relations and restricted, albeit without complete effectiveness, the exchange of peoples. Even if America hadn’t irritated their trading partners, the belief that it would become the center of the world’s commerce was based upon her assumption that the “United States alone affords such a route” that would so effectively connect East Asia to Western Europe. What she failed to foresee was Egypt’s eventual completion of the Suez Canal, which opened up Asian-European maritime trade and pushed the transcontinentals, the first of which was completed in the same month, to the side.

One more piece remained to Anna Ella Carroll’s vision, though. “With a railroad access to the entire continent, the blessing of our unequalled government and wise and wholesome laws will make us felt and propitiated by the entire world,” she claimed. “It is impossible to be too vigilant in promoting and spreading Protestant education over all that portion of our people. [The railroad] must spread the influence of American institutions over mankind, and dissipate that very darkness, under which men have been deluded, and their means squandered.” In short, she like many others believed in Manifest Destiny by train. From the beginning of their construction, though, transcontinentals indicated that while they would increase the population density of Nordic western protestants, they wouldn’t import righteousness with them. The well-known ‘Hell on Wheels’ towns, temporary settlements created by the hard-working and harder-drinking men constantly moving west and laying track, were the earliest indicator of this. Samuel Bowles, a journalist for The Republican, summed them up best: “By day disgusting, by night dangerous; almost everybody dirty, many filthy, and with the marks of lowest vice; averaging a murder a day, gambling and drinking, hurdy gurdy dancing and the vilest of sexual commerce the chief business and pastime of the hours.” Even when permanent settlements established themselves, the ‘very darkness’ of vice was not ‘dissipated’ by ‘protestant education.’ Western prostitutes were so common that they attained their own brand name of ‘soiled doves,’ violence was so endemic that newspapers in towns such as Cheyenne Wyoming ran a column titled Last Night’s Shootings, and gambling was so common that gamblers formed their own gangs.

So the railroad not only failed to dissipate moral darkness and poverty but brought more of it, and at what other costs? Let’s take a look at nature. Once upon a time, buffalo herds roamed by the millions across the great plains and through the heart of the country. While their decline began to a slight extent as a result of competition for space with and disease from the horses of Native Americans (who actually had a good understanding of responsible resource management), it was greatly accelerated and eventually completed by the railroads and the people they brought. On the commercial end of buffalo hunting, only one in five hides made the market and the rest of the meat was rarely used or spoiled; on the railroad end, train companies used the prospect of drive-by buffalo shooting as an attraction to travelers, an offer often taken advantage of. The result? “If the railroads...brought civilization, then the first sign of civilization on the southern plains was its stench as tens of thousands of rotting [bison] corpses proved too much for even the wolves to consume.” In fact, William Hornaday predicted in 1899 that only 1,091 out of millions of bison remained alive - modern estimates put the number between one and two thousand. The only reason that the 54,000 plus Native Americans that directly relied on bison didn’t starve or freeze was because the U.S. federal government stepped in and supplied them with relatively cheap blankets and beef.

Native Americans did endure much more than their fair share of sufferings beyond the bison’s virtual extinction, though. “We built iron roads, and you cannot stop the locomotive any more than you can stop the sun or moon, and you must submit,” said General Sherman to a Native American leader while his troops protected the first transcontinental in the final stages of its construction. This was a sad truth - when the Native Americans couldn’t be evicted from their lands by treaties that were forced upon them relentlessly, they were removed by troops. All in all, the railroads perpetrated an almost universally unjust invasion of their land and destruction of their culture.

So, were the railroads worth the corruption they engendered, the discrimination they imposed, and the financial problems that they fed to the economy and the American people? They opened the west and its resources, but they hurt the people of the west who had settled or been settled in it. They made interstate commerce and travel quicker, cheaper, and more possible, but through corrupt and irresponsible practices on a scale never before seen in the U.S. They boosted foreign trade, but only slightly. They mapped out modern America, but couldn’t this have been done slower and much less painfully by railroads had the government not pumped a few of them up with special banking privileges, gigantic land grants totaling about 242,000 square miles, military protection, direct subsidies from states and Washington to the tune of $360 billion over 29 years, huge federal tax exemptions, eminent domain powers, and monopoly protection? While there is no doubt that railroad travel across the country was faster, better, and cheaper than travel before, the hopes and expectations of the transcontinental vision only partially materialized. The lesson of that vision, then, is one so common and classic in history that one might call it 'common sense,' so I feel painfully unoriginal to repeat it, yet is often forgotten, lost in a mixture of enthusiasm, expectation, bias, and confidence. Most visions have their merits, but they are indeed mere visions. Most arguments about decisions for the future or the meaning of the past - this argument not excepted - have validity, but all the same are mere arguments. There is no way, moreover, that any argument about the past can fully encompass a single subject matter, nor can a prediction about the future, such as Miss Carroll’s, ever begin to grasp all the unforeseen developments that time brings or escape the law of unintended consequences. No matter how convincing, a vision, an argument, a perspective, an idea will almost always get some things right and some other things wrong while leaving a whole lot of other things out, no matter how right, wrong, or all-encompassing they seem.

-August Hutchinson

Particular thanks to Richard White for writing ‘Railroaded: Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America.’ The sources that gave me information and inspiration regarding this piece are as follows:

¹ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Star-Of-West} ⁹ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Ladies-Of-Tenderloin}

² ^{http://tinyurl.com/Eyewitness-History-Transcont} ¹⁰^{http://tinyurl.com/Golden-Spike-Class-Work}

³ ^{http://tinyurl.com/PBS-Transcontinental} ¹¹^{http://tinyurl.com/Great-Plains-Railroad}

⁴ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Transcontinental-vs-Suez-Canal} ¹² ^{http://tinyurl.com/RRs-Transform-Nation}

⁵ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Transcontinental-Textbook-1} ¹³ White, Richard. Railroaded.

⁶ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Transcontinental-Textbook-2} ¹⁴ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Hornaday-Buffalo-Killing}

⁷ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Transcontinental-Schmoop} ¹⁵ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Buffalo-American-PBS}

⁸ ^{http://tinyurl.com/Nothing-Like-It-In-The-World} ¹⁶ Norton, Mary Beth. A History of the American People.

LOCOMOTIVE RESTORATION UPDATE

2011-10-12T13:43:00.002-04:00

Master Carpenter Makes Unique Discovery As Restoration Work Begins On The No. 545 “A.J. Cromwell”

Built in 1888, at the B&O’s Mt. Clare shops, the No. 545 “A.J. Cromwell” was as a “no frills,” work horse intended to replace slow and outdated freight engines such as the distinctive Camel locomotives. The 545 and engines similar to it were the backbone of late 19^th century rail service and were known as “Consolidations,” based on the name of the first engine built for the Lehigh Valley with this appearance in 1866. They were heavier, more powerful, and utilitarian and served well into the 1920s. The 545 served until it was retired and preserved by the B&O in 1927 for the railroad’s 100^th anniversary celebration known as the Fair of the Iron Horse.

While working on the 545 the Museum’s Master Carpenter, Zell Olson, made a unique discovery. Underneath the roof sheeting of the locomotive’s cab, scribbled in pencil on the wooden roof boards were the names “Charles Serra/ Patsy Serra.” Staff searched the B&O’s employee records and found the likely culprit was a single employee; Charles Pasquale Serra. Born November 21, 1905, Serra began work at the B&O Apprentice Car Man at Mt. Clare on March 29, 1923. In 1927 he finished his apprenticeship and was listed as a Passenger Car Man. Passenger Car Men repaired passenger cars, which during this era were known as “heavyweights.” Heavyweights were clad in steel; however, underneath were wooden components and older wooden cars were still in service so it is likely that Serra, who had good carpentry skills, worked on the restoration of the 545 to repair the roof. Serra’s later jobs included Machinist Helper, and Freight Car Man. He was furloughed several times during his career during the Great Depression, rehired, and eventually dropped from the employee records in August of 1950. A later entry actually provided the clue that the two names were the same when it listed his name as “Charles Patsy Serra.”

Serra’s graffiti actually helps date the cab and confirm staff’s belief that the cab roof was new and completely rebuilt for the Fair in 1926-27. Zell was able to determine that the cab roof of the locomotive was rebuilt during the 1920s based on roof material, age of the wood, and style of nails used to fasten the boards together. Historic photos of the locomotive show that at some point the original flat roof on the cab of the engine was replaced with a rounded style roof. This was again replaced with the existing flat roof, which was more than likely done during Fair preparations to “back-date” the locomotive’s appearance to an earlier configuration. We believe that he took this time to place a little reminder of his work on the engine for future generations.

The No. 545 restoration continues and will return the locomotive to its 1927 “Fair of the Iron Horse” appearance. The Museum anticipates completion by the summer of 2012.

AN INVITATION

2011-09-06T10:12:00.002-04:00

The War Came By Train Civil War Reception Invitation

2011-03-31T14:33:00.007-04:00

The War Came By Train

2011-02-23T13:22:00.004-05:00

The Civil War was the first major conflict where railroads played a prominent role, and the B&O was the major line that straddled a divided country. Between April 19, 1861 (The Baltimore Riot of 1861) and April 21, 1865 (Lincoln’s funeral train leaving Baltimore for Illinois), the B&O stood as witness and participant in the greatest conflict the United States has ever faced. The story that the B&O Railroad Museum can tell better than any other organization on earth is the story of how railroads and railroaders shaped the course of American history during at pivotal moments of the conflict.

The War Came By Train will be the B&O Railroad Museum’s commemoration of 150^th anniversary the American Civil War and will feature:

Ø The National Landmark Roundhouse: The largest assemblage of Civil War railroad equipment in the world including eight locomotives and cars that served during the war, interpretive signage, video presentations, and life-size historic dioramas. Locomotives to be presented include The William Mason (1858), The Thatcher Perkins (1863), The Atlantic (1832), The Memnon (1848), The John Hancock (1835), and the Pioneer (1851). Kid-friendly activities too!

Ø The Annex Gallery: An exhibition space that will change annually to correspond with a war year (i.e. 2011 will focus on 1861). The exhibits will feature significant artifacts from the Smithsonian’s collection, the museum’s collection, and the collections of other institutions and private collectors in the region. Many of these artifacts will be on public exhibit for the first time.

Ø Train Ride: A narrated train ride to and from the museum’s Whistlestop Gateway terminal, located in front of the 18^th century Mount Clare Mansion and the site of Camp Carroll, the largest Union soldier encampment in Baltimore. Regularly scheduled Civil War reenactment and living history groups will greet guests, convey the life of the soldier, and explain what it was like to travel during the Civil War.

Ø B&O TV Network and Website: During The War Came By Train, these media will create online access to schedules of events, school-oriented curricula, and programming content directly related to the exhibits at the B&O. The website, which receives more than 3.5 million hits per year, will provide distance access to educational materials, archival images, schedules, and program news. The B&O TV Network, hosted by TV’s Michael Gross, will produce episodes about different ways the railroad impacted the war.

Ø Ellicott City Station: The program will include a major exhibit in the museum’s main gallery, monthly scholarly presentations related to railroading during the war, living history interpreters providing educational interactions, special events featuring Civil War period music and Civil War reenactors, and a HO scale model layout that demonstrates the connection between Ellicott City Station, Baltimore, and strategically important transportation fixtures in the surrounding area.

Ø Symposia and Special Events: Numerous scholarly lectures, public programs and interactive family activities focused on the role of American railroads during the war. Special events will be held throughout the five year celebration, culminating with a national symposium about the role of railroads in war.

The War Came By Train will serve as the B&O’s primary attraction for the five-year commemoration of the war’s sesquicentennial. Between April 2011 and December 2015, we will expose more than 1,000,000 guests to one of the greatest stories our museum and our community has to offer. By making connections between the Civil War and the history of American rail, we will develop important understandings about the role of transportation and industry during the war.

Book Review of Christopher McGowan's "Rail, Steam, and Speed"

2010-06-17T10:39:00.001-04:00

We celebrate, with justification, the proud heritage that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has given to America’s history. Genius, entrepreneurship, innovation, etc.—the marks of the pioneers—give us a sense of being at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. But then reality comes and splashes cold water in our face. Christopher McGowan, in his Rail, Steam, and Speed (Columbia University Press, New York, 2004) has delivered a jet stream. McGowan‘s book relates the remarkable story of the real birth of the age of railroads that took place in Britain, decades before the American age. His storyline centers around the famous “Rainhill trials” of October, 1829, its participants, the descriptions and performances of competing locomotives, and the preceding triumphs and tragedies leading up to the trials. And along the way he provides marvelous insight into the men of the trials; insight into the same traits that characterized the Americans who forged our age of locomotion. McGowan’s extensive resources and notes lend credibility to the book. His easy flowing narrative style lends pure enjoyment.

McGowan attributes the British initiative in scientific and engineering experimentation to the government’s policy of Laissez Faire, albeit imperfect and sometimes inconsistent, encouraged research and development and facilitated access to critical natural resources. To a degree, we can make the same deduction about America. Bureaucracy and instability, especially during the Napoleonic Age, inhibited the otherwise theoretically inclined French.

Robert Stephenson’s Rocket was declared the winner of the event, sponsored in order to select the type of locomotive to produce for the new Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which began service in 1830. It was not an arbitrary decision to hold the trials in Rainhill, not far from Liverpool. [And, incidentally, it was the “modernized” L&M Railway that caught the attention of the Board of Directors of the B&O. A healthy and productive intellectual exchange took place, involving visits between Baltimore and Liverpool.]

The story really begins with James Watt’s rejection of high pressure steam engines as too dangerous to be practical. His c. 1764 work on improving the seminal low-pressure Newcomen engine, used mainly for pumping water from mines, led to his invention of an engine with a separate cylinder that connected to the main cylinder through a pipe. Spraying cold water into the smaller cylinder mitigated the need to cool down the main cylinder. Skipping ahead, Watt’s engine was successfully manufactured and marketed. The main market was in Cornwall. Watt’s engine caught the attention of Cornishman Richard Trevithick who, despite Watt’s warnings about high-pressure, developed a smaller reciprocating engine, taking advantage of the fact that high-pressure allowed reduction in the necessary stroke. This was ultimately implemented into the recognized first steam locomotive in the first years of the nineteenth century. But he concentrated on pumping engines and produced many versions, one incidentally named Ding Dong. Eventually Trevithick was lured into producing engines for precious metal mines in Peru, a venture which promised great wealth

The three most prominent contestants in the trials were:

(a) John Braithwaite and John Ericsson, builders of Novelty. The main feature was that two vertical sections were connected by a horizontal air pipe flowing into the “furnace” (fire box), allowing the air flow to be directly proportional to speed. And Novelty’s speed was at one trial calculated at 32 mph!

(b) Timothy Hackworth and his Sans Pareil. Weighing nearly five tons, it was about 600 pounds over the Rainhill’s judges limit. It was “penalized” by being assigned heavier loads to carry. Hackworth employed a “return-flue” boiler to increase the heating surface area. So the chimney [smokestack] and “furnace” (firebox) were at the same end, at the front of the locomotive. Coupling rods joined the front and rear wheels, the latter being connected to the pistons. This was effectively a four wheel-driven locomotive. [And a not very safe one, since the driver was given only a small plank to stand on, with no restraining bars.]

(c) Robert Stephenson—naturally with paternal assistance—and his Rocket were the ultimate winners The main innovation was the use of multiple flue tubes, to increase the heat transfer capability. It was by far the most powerful and well-built of the engines, thanks in part to the Stephenson work ethic and experience.

McGowan skillfully arranges his chapters into a thematic structure—preparing for the trials, the birth of locomotion, the participants, the trials, and the aftermath. His coverage of the participants stresses their motivations—competitiveness, money, social class expectation, etc. George Stephenson wanted to move beyond his Northumberland rusticity; but he had to live that through his son Robert’s upward mobility. Timothy Hackworth, a man of God, sacrificed precious time to observe the Sabbath.

Coverage of the trials itself does not fail in excitement and suspense, although we have known of the results for nearly two centuries. A feed pump failure led to a low water condition and near ‘meltdown’ before Hackworth’s Sans Pareil. Final humiliation for Hackworth occurred when the patched up engine was declared too heavy for the final trial. Boiler failures plagued John Braithwaite’s and John Ericsson’s Novelty, the crowd favorite.

So did Rocket win by default? Maybe, but history says “No”. Stephenson’s multi-tubular boiler design—dramatically increasing the surface area available for heat transfer—proved to be the prototype for the evolution of early nineteenth century locomotive design, including perhaps American Peter Cooper’s prototype later known as Tom Thumb. (It’s intriguing to this reviewer as to how knowledge of multi-tubular boiler got to Cooper so quickly, if indeed it did at all. Trans-Atlantic communications, i.e., post or hand-carrying, in 1829 and 1830 were not exactly timely. Did a witness to the trials pass the information to Cooper? Is there any correspondence? Some research is certainly warranted here. There is another item from the book of “local” interest. After earlier trial runs in September 1829, Rocket was returned to the Stephensons’ Killingworth shop for repairs. It was then dismantled for shipment from Carlisle to Liverpool. It’s worth quoting McGowan here: “Two locomotives, built for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and a stationary engine for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, were finished at the same time. It was planned for Rocket to be loaded aboard their vessel, for shipment to Liverpool docks, but her departure was delayed. This was most fortunate because the ship was lost on the treacherous passage around the north coast of Scotland.” Unfortunately, McGowan’s notes are absent vis a vis this snippet.)

The book devotes more than passing coverage to Brunel and the “Gauge Wars”, civil engineering advances in building the railways—it is known, for example, that Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Jr., chief engineer of the Thomas Viaduct, was familiar with George Stephenson’s Sankey Viaduct for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway—and the ultimate tragedies met by some in the opening years of the railway age.

B&O Railroad Museum Seeks Civil War Artifacts for Loan

2010-03-22T14:13:00.001-04:00

B&O Railroad Museum Seeks Civil War

Artifacts for Loan

In the Spring of 2011, the B&O Railroad Museum will open a major exhibition to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the American Civil War. Focused on the personalities, engagements and role of regional railroads (Baltimore & Ohio; Northern Central; Western Maryland; Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore, Cumberland Valley and others) the exhibition will feature the largest assembled collection of Civil War locomotives and rolling stock in the World.

Small artifacts, archival and photographic materials related to specific battles, personalities, locations and military units are sought for a 5-year revolving exhibit that will change for each year of the War. ALL LOANS WILL BE FOR A PERIOD NOT TO EXCEED 14 MONTHS.

The B&O Railroad Museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The Museum has announced that noted author and historian Daniel Carroll Toomey will be the Guest Curator for the exhibition.

Loaned objects will be insured for replacement value and cared for at the highest museum standards. Credit (if desired) will be given to the owner of all loaned objects, images and archival material.

On the reverse is a list of categories of 3-dimensional objects sought. In the case of archival and photographic materials, we seek high resolution digital copies and not original documents or photographs.

For further information or to inquire about loaning objects contact:

Dave Shackelford

Chief Curator

410-752-2462 ext. 215

chiefcurator@borail.org

Thank you for your consideration.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Military Units:

Union

6th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (30-day regiment 1861)

8^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry

1^st Connecticut Cavalry

1^st Maryland Cavalry

7^th New York Regiment

Cook’s Battery (Massachusetts)

6^th West Virginia Infantry

8^th New York Infantry

10^th Maine Infantry

The Patapsco Guard (home defense)

The Railroad Brigade

3^rd Maryland Infantry, Potomac Home

Brigade

Maryland Union Units

Confederate

12^th Virginia Cavalry

5^th Virginia Infantry (Virginia Militia)

Maryland Confederate Units

Personalities:

U.S. General Lew Wallace

U.S. General John Wool

U.S. General Benjamin Butler

U.S. General John Dix

U.S. General William B. Franklin

U.S. General Herman Haupt

U.S. Colonel (later General) Daniel Craig McCallum

U.S. General George B. McClellan

U.S. General Dodson Ramseur

U.S. General Robert Rhodes

U.S. General James B. Ricketts

U.S. General William Selby Harney

U.S. General William Rosecrans

C.S. General Jubal Early

C.S. General Bradley T. Johnson

C.S. General William “Grumble” Jones

C.S. General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

C.S. Major (later Colonel) Harry Gilmore

C.S. General John D. Imboden

C.S. General Lewis Armistead

C.S. Colonel James H. Lane

C.S. General John McClausland

C.S. Colonel Thomas R. Sharpe

C.S. General Kenton Harper

C.S. General Joseph E. Johnston

C.S. General J.E.B. Stuart

John Work Garrett, Pres. B&O Railroad

Ross Winans (Baltimore)

Charles Dickinson (inventor of steam gun)

William Prescott Smith, B&O Railroad

Allan Pinkerton

Events/Campaigns/Subjects:

Pratt Street Riot-Baltimore

Relay, Maryland (Thomas Viaduct)

Capture of Winans/Dickinson Steam Gun

Battle of Monocacy (Maryland)

Battle of Chickamauga (Tennessee)

Lincoln’s inauguration train trip

Lincoln’s funeral train

Johnson/Gilmore Raid into Maryland

Raid against Martinsburg, VA

Jones/O’Neill raid, Oakland, MD

1864 Sanitary Fair, Baltimore

U.S. Military Railroads

Grand Review May 23-24, 1865 in Washington D.C.

A Surprising Piece of Chicago Preserved in Baltimore

2009-10-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

Countless visitors to the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland pass through a pair of monumental wrought iron gates coming and going each day. Somewhat hidden from view when the gates are open during the day they present a beautiful appearance when closed.

These gates are an historic remnant of the once palatial Grand Central Station of the B&O Railroad in Chicago, Illinois. Salvaged from scrap when the great station was demolished in 1971, they were re-configured and installed at the Museum in 1985 during the last renovation of the Museum’s campus by the Chessie System Railroads under Hays T. Watkins, one of the museum’s most important benefactors.

The Northwest corner of the B&O Railroad's Grand Central Station in Chicago

Grand Central Station, located in downtown Chicago, Illinois was constructed in 1890 and ceased operations in 1969. It was located at 201 W. Harrison Street in the south-western part of the Chicago Loop, the block bounded by Harrison Street, Wells Street, Polk Street and the Chicago River. Grand Central Station was designed by architect Solon Spencer Beman for the Wisconsin Central Railway, and was completed by the Chicago and Northern Pacific Railroad.
Grand Central Station was eventually purchased by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which used the station as the Chicago terminus for its passenger rail service, including its glamorous Capitol Limited to Washington, D.C. Major tenant railroads included the Soo Line Railroad, successor to the Wisconsin Central, the Chicago Great Western Railway, and the Pere Marquette Railway.
The station was executed in the Norman Castellated architectural style by architect Solon S. Beman, who had gained notoriety as the designer of the Pullman company neighborhood. Constructed of brick, brownstone and granite, it was 228 feet wide and 482 feet long. Imposing arches, crenellations, a spacious arched carriage-court and a multitude of towers dominated the walls. Its most famous feature, however, was an impressive 247-foot tower at the northeast corner of the property. The interior of the Grand Central Station was decorated as extravagantly as the exterior. The waiting room had marble floors, Corinthian-style columns, stained-glass windows and a marble fireplace, and a restaurant. The station also had a 100-room hotel, but accommodations ended late in 1901.

Grand Central Station's monumental arched train shed.

Not as famous as the clocktower but equally architecturally unique was Grand Central Station's self-supporting glass and steel train shed, 555 feet long, 156 feet wide and 78 feet tall, among the largest in the world at the time it was constructed. The trainshed, considered an architectural gem and a marvel of engineering long after it was built, housed six tracks and had platforms long enough to accommodate fifteen-car passenger trains. When it was finally completed, the station had cost its railroad owners one million dollars to build.

Original decorative wrought iron gates in the Grand Central train shed

At the track terminus inside the great train shed where the shed met the head house of the station were the great wrought iron gates. Millions of passengers passed through these gates to board their trains just as visitors do today at the Museum.
When installed at the Museum, the gates were reconfigured combining two gates, one on top of the other, to achieve the necessary height for the Museum entrance. There is no record of who salvaged these great wonders of iron mongering, or whose idea it was to bring them to Baltimore for installation at the Museum. You will know, next time you visit, that you are passing through a remarkable piece of B&O history transformed and transported from Chicago to Baltimore.
Courtney B. Wilson, Executive Director

Who came through.....

2009-07-17T15:26:00.001-04:00

Former General Robert E. Lee as he appeared as President of Washington College in 1869

On two occasions, following the Civil War the Ellicott City Station played host to former General Robert E. Lee. During his post-war tenure as President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, Lee saw a critical need for a railroad connection to Lexington. When a visitor to Lexington once asked Lee about the best route to travel out of the town Lee replied: “It makes but little difference, for whichever route you select, you will wish you had taken the other.”

He and a delegation from Virginia came to Baltimore on April 20, 1869 to visit with John Work Garrett, president of the B&O and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore to seek support for a rail connection. Three years prior, the B&O had summoned Col. James Randolph to survey possible routes down the Shenandoah Valley.

Following several meetings and affairs in Baltimore Lee took an afternoon train on April 28, 1869 from Camden Station to Ellicott City Station to visit relatives. From the station he took a carriage out the Frederick turnpike west of town to see Mrs. Samuel George or “Ella” as he called her. Ella was the daughter of Lee’s first cousin Charles Henry Carter. The next morning he was ushered back into Ellicott City, up Maryland Avenue on the heights above the railroad to the estate known as “Linwood” the home of Major Washington Peter. Major Peter was the first cousin of General Lee’s wife Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee.

"Linwood" the estate of Major Washington Peter as it appears today. The former mansion is now the Linwood Children's Center

Linwood, which still stands, was an imposing stone mansion originally built approximately 1835 and enlarged several times. Lee spent the morning with Major Peter before going down the hill to Ellicott City Station for the mid-day Baltimore-bound train.

Lee would return to “Linwood” about three and a half months prior to his death. On June 30, 1870 Lee arrived in Baltimore alone to consult a leading physician Dr. Thomas Hepburn Buckler concerning his failing health. Following various medical examinations he left from Camden Station on July 4, 1870 for Ellicott City Station to stay with his wife’s cousin Washington Peter. This time he lingered quietly in the countryside at the beautiful estate and on the morning of July 14^th he took the early train from Ellicott City to Baltimore and then South to Lexington as General Robert E. Lee would cross the Potomac River for the last time. Lee passed away on October 12, 1870.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

"I heard that lonesome whistle..."

2009-06-22T12:11:00.001-04:00

American music icon Johnny Cash was no stranger railroading or to the B&O Railroad Museum. Throughout his career the lyrics of his country and rockabilly songs wove trains, railroads and railroad workers in and out of his American ballads. Album covers sported names like All Aboard the Blue Train and Ride This Train and many of the songs recorded therein were themed around the railroad. Familiar lyrics to Wreck of the Old ’97, Rock Island Line, Train of Love, and Hey Porter! will live in American musicology forever. His back up band “Tennessee Three” that accompanied him for more than 40 years even developed a unique “chicka-boom” freight train sound inextricably linked to Cash’s music.

Cash rode on the B&O many times in his career going from engagement to engagement. In 1962 while on an East Coast concert tour, Cash visited the Museum, then called the “B&O Transportation Museum.” In 1986, officers of the Chessie System (about to become CSX) invited Cash to join the Museum’s replica locomotive “Tom Thumb” at SteamExpo 1986 in Vancouver British Columbia. The Vancouver expo featured 21 historic early steam locomotives and one crane all under live steam for the event held in May and June of 1986.

Johnny Cash poses in front of the replica steam locomotives "Best Friend of Charleston and the B&O's Museum's "Tom Thumb."

As the B&O Railroad Museum prepared to celebrate the 175^th anniversary of American railroading 2003-2004, the Smithsonian’s senior curator of transportation Bill Withuhn, working closely with Museum officials successfully engaged Johnny Cash to be the spokesperson for the crown jewel of the celebration The Fair of the Iron Horse 175.

Publicity photograph of Johnny Cash authorized for use by the B&O Railroad Museum for the celebration of the 175th anniversary of American railroading 2002-2003.

In that role and with his health rapidly deteriorating Cash wrote several letters on behalf of the museum and the celebration and had agreed to appear at the Fair scheduled for the summer of 2004. The Fair of the Iron Horse 175 and the remainder of the celebration was cancelled due to the tragic collapse of the Museum’s roundhouse roof during the President’s Day snowstorm February 16-17, 2003.

Johnny Cash passed away on September 12, 2003 leaving a legacy of railroad music to the ages.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

A Rare Peek Into the Past

2009-06-08T10:45:00.001-04:00

Rare 19th century photography, portraiture, and fine art affords historians an opportunity to gather a glimpse of many aspects of American life. Presented here (with reference numbers added) is the earliest known photograph of the Ellicott City Station and the surrounding buildings and structures in Ellicott's Mills. While the photographer is unknown, this view was taken atop the roof of the Gambrill Flour Mill once located on the Baltimore County side of the Patapsco River roughly where the large concrete Washington Flour Mill stands today (built in 1918 as The Patapsco Flouring Mills). The Gambrill and Carroll family bought the Ellicott's mill in 1832 and operated it for nearly 100 years.

The image has many charactertistics of either a Daguerreotype (invented 1839) or an Ambrotype (invented 1854) but this view was re-published by E&HT Anthony of New York (1862-1902) as a stereoview. Stereoviews were popular throughout the mid to late 19th century as a form of home entertainment. They were two side by side paper photographs mounted on cardboard (often with a descriptive narrative printed on the reverse) and designed to be seen through the use of a stereopticon. When placed in the view, the image appears in 3-D.

Stereopticon

Let’s take a rare peek into the past and see if we can gather some clues that might date the photograph!

Ellicott City

1) The B&O Railroad Ellicott City Station (1831) is seen here with its long roof and cupola but without the long trackside overhang and the addition of fancy timbered eaves that were added when architect E. Francis Baldwin designed and installed decorative additions to modernize the Station in 1880.

2) The Patapsco Hotel (1830) with its multi-storied piazzas actually served as the second railroad passenger station in America (the first was at Mt. Clare). The Ellicott City Station (1) was designed by the B&O Railroad as a freight station. This hotel, located directly across Main Street had a second floor passenger waiting rooms and a trackside platform for boarding. The old hotel served passengers until the Ellicott City Station was remodeled by Baldwin in 1880. In 1887 the building became the printing plant for the town's newspaper. By 1912 it was a warehouse for ice when the B&O locomotive de-railed and structurally damaged the building in 1925. Abandoned after the accident, the hotel collapsed in April 1926 and was re-built in its current form.

3) In the foreground of the images is Jonathon Ellicott's home (1790). One of three large stone residences at the mill built by George and Jonathon Ellicott, it was severely damaged in the 1868 flood (along with the Gambrill Mill and many of the other houses seen in front of the Ellicott house) and completely destroyed by Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

4) Perched in the distance atop the hill is Howard County Courthouse (1843). Construction began in 1841 and was completed in 1843.

Taking all of this evidence and information about the structures depicted into account, we definitely date the photograph before the 1869 flood and after the invention of this type of photography (1839). Characteristics of the original image (present when copied to a stereoview) show some discoloration, and scratching that is typical of Daguerreotype and Ambrotype photographs that used silver emulsion on the surface of a glass plate. This type of photography was most prevalent in America from about 1850-1865. Short of a miraculous discovery of a dated specimen, we will probably never know the exact date the unknown photographer climbed atop the Gambrill Mill to take this picturesque view. But we can be confident that it was taken in the decade preceding the Great Flood of 1868.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Cool Passengers on the B&O

2009-05-19T18:12:00.000-04:00

On April 23, 1930, the B&O Railroad debuted a new richly appointed dining car named Martha Washington. One of its series of “Colonial” diners, this heavyweight car was adorned with shield back mahogany chairs, fancy architectural details, and crystal lighting. Its menus were branded as “tavern fare” and featured specialties of Chesapeake regional cuisine not unlike our forefathers would have known in colonial times. The Martha Washington, however, had a feature that no other passenger car in the world had ever had before; air conditioning!

Interior of the B&O "Colonial" dining car "Martha Washington". The world's first air conditioned railroad car, 1930.

During the preceding two years, B&O mechanical and electrical engineers spent many sequestered dark days in a tin sided wooden shed appended to the rear of the Mt. Clare Roundhouse with an inventor and engineer named Willis Haviland Carrier and his team to design and install a system of passenger car air conditioning that would, one day, serve the world of trains.

Mt. Clare Air Conditioning Test Shed 1934

Carrier was born in New York in 1875 and graduated with an engineering degree from Cornell in 1901. A 1902 Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” article titled “While Walking in a Fog” detailed Carrier’s inspiration to invent air conditioning while waiting for a train in Pittsburgh amidst a dense fog. His first patent was in 1906 and he successfully air conditioned the first building in America in Minneapolis in 1914.

Willis Haviland Carrier, the father of modern air conditioning

Much secrecy surrounded the development of railroad car air conditioning at Mt. Clare. Once designed and installed in the prototype diner hidden away in the little test shed, B&O engineers heated the interior of the car to a temperature of 93 degrees, turned off the heat and then turned on the newly installed air conditioning to test it capabilities. On the first attempt, the interior of the car reached 73 degrees in 19 minutes and 30 seconds.

Successfully launched and another “first” in the long line of B&O Railroad’s legendary innovations, the B&O went about applying Carrier’s adapted invention to an entire train. On May 24, 1934 the B&O inaugurated the World’s first fully air conditioned train The Columbian for its maiden run from Washington D.C. to New York.

Courtney B. Wilson
Executive Director

A Notable Neighbor

2009-04-21T08:55:00.001-04:00

John Pendleton Kennedy

A Notable Neighbor and Railroad Passenger in Ellicott’s Mills

Spending many of his summers in a small cottage perched on the hillside high above The B&O Railroad Station in Ellicott’s Mills, John Pendleton Kennedy was the scion of a cultivated Baltimore, Md., family. Born in 1795 he graduated from Baltimore College in 1812 and served for 2 years in the Maryland militia. In 1816 he began practicing law. It is said he disliked practicing law, however, and by 1829 (thanks to a generous legacy from a wealthy uncle) he was able to withdraw from the courtroom and begin a long literary and public career. Early on Kennedy contributed sketches and satires to various publications. In 1832 he published his first book, Swallow Barn, a series of sketches depicting plantation life in Virginia, written under the pseudonym Mark Littleton. Under the same name he published his most successful novel, Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835).
With regular passenger service between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills well established, Kennedy purchase a small plot of land and built a neat little summer cottage above the B&O Station down on Main Street. Throughout his creative career, he lodged in his small retreat in Ellicott’s Mills far away from the dismal, humid Baltimore summer. No stranger to the B&O Railroad or Ellicott City Station, Kennedy rode back and forth to Baltimore on a regular basis maintaining a household in the City for business and winter lodging. On several occasions, Edgar Allen Poe debarked the B&O on Main Street and made his way up to Kennedy’s summer retreat.
Kennedy was also a friend of B&O Railroad director and general counsel John H.B. Latrobe. On an evening in October, 1833, three of Baltimore's most discerning gentlemen were gathered around a table in the back parlor of Latrobe’s house. Fortified with “some old wine and some good cigars,” John Pendleton Kennedy, James H. Miller and John H. B. Latrobe poured over manuscripts submitted in a literary contest sponsored by the Baltimore Sunday Visitor. Their unanimous choice for best prose tale was “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a curious and haunting tale of annihilation. The fifty dollar prize was awarded to the story’s heretofore unknown and, at the time, penniless author; Edgar Allan Poe.
In 1838 he not only produced another novel, Rob of the Bowl, but was also elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Whig. He lost and regained the seat several times. During this period he began to turn from fiction to more overtly political writing. A close friend and colleague of Edgar Allen Poe, many letters between the two are preserved at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1840 Kennedy's satire on Jacksonian democracy was published. In 1843 his Defense of the Whigs attacked John Tyler's defection from party policy on assuming the presidency after the death of William Henry Harrison. Kennedy produced his last important literary effort, a two-volume biography of the great lawyer William Wirt, in 1849.
In 1852, now a well known figure in

America

, Kennedy was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Millard Fillmore. During his 8-month tenure he helped organize Adm. Matthew Perry's expedition to

Japan

and dispatch the search party trying to find the missing explorer Sir John Franklin and his expedition.
At the outset of the Civil War, Kennedy, who had fought secession on the one hand and republicanism on the other, finally cast his lot with the Union. At the end of the War he published Mr. Ambrose's Letters on the Rebellion, in which he pleaded for compassion toward the fallen South. Occasional Addresses, Political and Official Papers, and At Home and Abroad (all 1872) were published posthumously. He died peacefully in his sleep on August 10, 1870 and is buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore.
Courtney B. Wilson, Executive Director

Beast Butler Asks A Favor

2009-04-03T13:04:00.001-04:00

“Beast Butler” Asks a Favor

A letter is presented here dated April 11, 1867 from former Major General Benjamin F. Butler to John Work Garrett, president of the B&O Railroad Company. Butler, a politically appointed Massachusetts general, occupied Baltimore in May 1861 thus quelling continued southern resistance under a heavy military force. With occupation troops stationed all along the B&O’s lines between Washington and Baltimore, no doubt Garrett and Butler became well acquainted with one another in the opening months of the Civil War. Later while in command of New Orleans he issued General Order No. 28 after some provocation by the citizens which stated that if any woman should insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a "woman of the town plying her avocation", i.e., a prostitute. This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal from command of the Department of the Gulf on December 17, 1862. He was nicknamed "Beast Butler," and "Spoons," for his alleged habit of pilfering the silverware of Southern homes in which he stayed. Not all bad, Butler was an unrepentant abolitionist and post-war civil rights activist.

In the post war years Butler was elected a Republican Member of Congress and also assumed the presidency of an agency authorized by Congress that established and oversaw “The National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers” known colloquially as the “Old Soldier’s Home.”

In this interesting letter Butler writes to Garrett requesting that he “…aid this noble charity, who are only maimed and disabled soldiers…” by providing passenger fares for them at half the published rate. Butler continued to make his case by telling Garrett that his “…well known liberality and public spirit…” as well as the fact that the B&O received such “…liberal compensation during the War…and much protection…” for its movement of troops should certainly consider taking the case of the “…maimed relics of the Army of the Republic.” Who could resist such a request! Unfortunately we don’t know Garrett’s answer but given the compelling nature of this letter, Butler’s position in the House of Representatives and other evidence of his charity, my guess is that John Work Garrett wrote back a resounding “yes!”

Courtney B. Wilson
Executive Director

Former Congressman Benjamin F. Butler

B&O Railroad President John Work Garrett

FLOOD!!

2009-03-20T14:31:00.001-04:00

Flood!

Standing at the at the corner of Main Street and Maryland Avenue a visitor to Ellicott City Station can gaze up at a wooden post supporting the walkway across the B&O Railroad’s Oliver Viaduct and see markings documenting the height of various floods through the Patapsco River Valley. The greatest of them all, rising 21.5 feet, came roaring down the evening of July 24, 1868.

In the memory of many, however, is the Great Flood of 1972 (marked on the post just below the cross beam) that rose to 14.5 feet. Pounding rain washed over Maryland on the morning of June 21, 1972 as Hurricane Agnes crept up the East Coast. Throughout the morning the Patapsco River rose at a relatively moderate rate. The rain kept coming, however, almost with a vengeance until the River began to spill over its banks. Tributaries throughout the valley began to fill fields and low lying areas adding more and more water to the Patapsco. Between about 8 PM and 9 PM that sultry summer evening the river rose more than 10 feet reaching its crest sometime in the early morning hours of June 22^nd. The waters would nearly reach the main waiting room of the Ellicott City Station at track level.

Ellicott City Station and its adjacent bridge positioned at the junction of the Patapsco River and the Tiber River flowing down Main Street witnessed a backwash of water filled with dangerous debris that would threaten the Station that had survived the devastating deluge of 1868. Eight people would die that night-swept away by the raging waters. Automobiles, trucks, large chunks of buildings, telephone poles and twisted railroad track would wreak havoc on anything in their path. Years would pass before Ellicott City and the other communities in the Patapsco Valley would recover.

Two interesting outcomes of the 1972 flood, silver linings to dark storm clouds, have left legacies of B&O history. Rushing water across the railroad tracks entering and leaving Ellicott City Station unearthed some of the B&O Railroad’s early engineering. Granite stone stringers that supported iron strap rail from the 1831 rail bed construction were exposed to the light of day for the first time in more than 125 years. Examples of these along with pieces of original iron strap rail were extracted and brought into the Museum’s collection while others were left in their original position.

Still in occasional use by the Chessie System Railroad as a freight depot, the flood damaged historic station was under threat of sale and/or demolition. In 1974 a group of local preservationists led by Roland and Enalee Bounds gathered up the resources to take possession of the Station, restore it and open it to the public as a museum. They established an organization named Historic Ellicott City Inc. that operated the The Oldest Railroad Station in America for more than 30 years and has tackled numerous important preservation projects in the old town.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Newspaper accounts revealing the devastation left by the flood of 1972.

1831 iron strap rail unearthed by the flood waters

Capitol Dome Logo

2009-03-09T10:58:00.001-04:00

The iconic B&O Railroad symbol, know as the “Capitol Dome Logo” was designed by artist and designer Otto Kuhler (July 31, 1894 – August 5, 1977). Kuhler was one of the best known industrial designers and artists in America. Throughout his career he designed sports cars, street and subway cars, a typewriter, heat insulated food containers, passenger and freight cars but is, perhaps, best know for his streamlined designs for steam and diesel locomotives. His extensive concepts for the design modernization many American railroads still inspire design today. In addition he was a prolific artist of industrial aesthetics and of the American West.

Kuhler (pronounced "Cooler") became a U.S. citizen in 1928. Eight years before he had married Simonne Gillot, daughter of a Belgian doctor. They had one daughter, Winona married Zabriskie, and one son, Renaldo, who became known as a natural-history museum artist.
As art director of the B&O Employee’s Magazine in the 1930’s and 40’s Kuhler was instrumental in developing the blue and gray color scheme used on the company’s passenger sets and the modernized herald of B&O. At the time, the B&O’s Public Relations Department had developed a marketing scheme centered on the railroad’s exclusive lines in and out of Washington D.C., thus inspiring his use of the Unites States Capitol dome as the central element of their brand. This symbol, instantly recognizable, has had a lasting effect on American popular culture.

When B&O turned to streamlining its Washington-New York run Kuhler could finally establish his concept of a "bullet nose" design on a steam locomotive that became known as "Kuhler type". The first "Kuhler type" locomotive pulled the famous Royal Blue train, the B&O’s signature passenger train between Washington and New York.

B&O “Kuhler Type” streamlined P-7 locomotive pulling the blue, gold and gray liveried Royal Blue passenger train across the Thomas Viaduct in Elkridge, Maryland.

Eventually the Kuhlers sold their New York home and moved to a ranch near Pine, Colorado. Cattle raising, functional building design and painting the American West would occupy the autumn of his life. At age 75 he sold the ranch and moved to Santa Fé, New Mexico. Eight years later he moved to Denver, Colorado, where Kuhler died at age 83.

Kuhler’s design for a fanciful gas station and canopy (1958).

Kuhler’s etchings, watercolors and paintings of industrial scenes and Western landscapes are found in museums and private collections around the World.

Pittsburgh (watercolor) by Otto Kuhler

Courtney B. Wilson
Executive Director

Crossing Over

2009-02-19T15:55:00.001-05:00

The 1931 steel railroad bridge and one remaining arch of the historic Oliver Viaduct

Crossing Over

Today as one drives into or out of Ellicott City on Main Street there is an historic intersection of roads and rails. Immediately west of the Ellicott City Station is a steel bridge and one granite stone arch that carries the B&O ‘s old main line over Frederick Road once a part of the National Road. A symbolic crossing where America’s first railroad met a major wagon route to America’s interior.

The B&O built three major stone viaducts between Mt. Clare in Baltimore and Ellicott City Station. The current steel bridge, erected in 1931, was a nod to an expanding town, a trolley system that once operated up Main Street and the dominance of the automobile. A stately triple arch viaduct, designed by Caspar Wever and constructed in 1829 once spanned the National Road here. It was named after Robert Oliver, one of Baltimore’s “merchant elite” and a founding director of the railroad and was built in 100 days at a cost of $21,830.00.

The dedication occurred on Saturday August 28, 1830 when Robert Oliver, along with a distinguished company of compatriots, the press and citizens listened to B&O President Philip E. Thomas say “The noble edifice of which we have just witnessed the completion, I have been instructed to designate by the name of a fellow-citizen…distinguished for his liberality, public spirit and generous support of the magnificent enterprise in which we have embarked. This structure will accordingly thereafter be distinguished by the name of the Oliver Viaduct.”

One of the original three stone arches remains in place spanning the Tiber River just before it spills into the Patapsco. On the west side of the steel structure at the base of the stone wall is the original cornerstone dated “AD 1829.” Immediately above is the inscription “AL 5829” a traditional calendar date used by the Freemasons who believed that the world was created 4,000 years before the birth of Christ.

The next time you visit ponder this crossing for a moment. While wagons still plodded their way across a muddy arduous path below a new technology, literally, flew over.

Rare 19th century view of the Oliver Viaduct as originally constructed. The Fredericktown Turnpike or National Road passes through the two arches later replaced by the steel span.

A (minor) Mystery Unveiled

2009-02-09T14:00:00.001-05:00

A good friend, Nick Hollick from Baltimore, had been telling me for some time that his father had passed along an interesting B&O Railroad document that he’d like me to take a look at. After some months of prodding, Nick showed up last December with the subject matter in hand. A beautiful 19^th century document indeed enhanced with the bold signature of B&O Railroad President John Work Garrett.

Upon reading it, however, the content presented an interesting (yet minor, in that the answer was relatively easy to find) mystery to me. An “Agreement…” of sorts dated June 16, 1875 between the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and the B&O Railroad essentially laying out the terms of sale for Baltimore City’s interest and ownership of the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad Company to the B&O. The B&O agreed to pay the City $1 million over the course of 25 years, not an insignificant sum in 1875!

We all know that the public private partnership that began in establishing the B&O was forged upon significant investment in the venture by both the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. But, how did the City acquire a significant interest in a railroad way out in the western hills of Pennsylvania? I had to answer this for myself and all of you…let alone for Mr. Hollick who witnessed the stymied look on my face that day.

I discovered that the story goes back to the mid-1840’s when the business community of Pittsburgh expressed a desire to connect with the B&O Railroad being unsatisfied with Pennsylvania’s system of canals and inclined planes for shipping goods East. The Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad (P&CRR), conceived to run into Cumberland, Maryland had been chartered by Pennsylvania in 1837 but never built. To complicate matters the State legislature passed an act to charter the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) west to Pittsburgh as well as giving permission to the B&O to construct a line there. Even though construction began on that line and it was completed from Pittsburgh to Connellsville, Garrett’s attempt to extend the line to Cumberland was interrupted by both the Civil War and the PRR. By 1862, even though the B&O had acquired significant stock holdings in the P&CRR and Garrett was willing to loan the company $1 million to complete the line to Cumberland, Tom Scott the Vice President of the PRR craftily maneuvered the legislature into passing laws to tie up Garrett’s hands effectively preventing the extension of the line and connection to the B&O for the time being. This legislation allowed the P&CRR to be taken over by a new company under the control of the PRR.

Following the war Garrett and his Baltimore allies repeated sued the Pennsylvania Legislature over Tom Scott’s actions and in 1868 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found the laws unconstitutional thus returning control of the P&CRR to the B&O. Once returned Garrett approached the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore as well as a few Pittsburgh bankers to secure the capital necessary to complete the line from Pittsburgh all the way to Cumberland Maryland where it could finally connect to the B&O. The company minute books show that the line was competed with great efficiency and that Benjamin Latrobe helped drive the “golden spike” of the completed railroad near Fort Hill Pennsylvania on April 10, 1871. The long awaited battle was done and B&O service began into the heart of the PRR’s long held monopoly on Pittsburgh.

The only detail left was Garrett’s promise to re-pay the City of Baltimore and other investors for its financial interests in the P&CRR. And thus we have the terms of the repayment detailed in this historic document and the end of the stymied look on my face.

Our sincere appreciation goes to Nick Hollick for donating this important and historic document to the Hays T. Watkins Research Library and Archives.

Pullman Helps the War Effort

2008-10-28T13:35:00.001-04:00

At the beginning of World War II, the B&O Railroad, along with the rest of the nation’s railroads, were not prepared for the massive amount of personnel and material that was to be transported across the country. Of troop movements in the US, 97 percent were handled by the railroads with an average of 1 million troops moved per month. As a result, the United States Government ordered 2,400 Troop Sleepers from the Pullman Company to help prevent overcrowding on regular train service. These cars were fashioned from existing boxcars or were built new based on standard steel boxcar design. Interiors were fitted with 30 bunks, each with two coat hangers and a rifle rack. The bunks were stacked three high and the middle bunk could be lowered to help create a seat for daytime travel. Each car also had drinking water as well as sinks and toilets. The Pullman Company insisted that each car have a porter just like regular Pullman cars in service on the railroads. One bunk was closed off just for the use of the porter.

After the War, the troop sleepers were sold as surplus and were bought by many different railroads. Our Troop Sleeper #7437 was sold to the Western Maryland Railroad which refitted and used the car as part of the wreck train, a special train designed to respond to derailments and wrecks used in Elkins, WV. After the Western Maryland Railway was merged into the Chessie System in the early 1970s the car was declared surplus once again. In 1988 the Troop Sleeper was donated to the Museum and, following its restoration, is exhibited with half of its interior restored to its WWII appearance. The other half of the car was left as modified by the Western Maryland Railway and now contains an exhibit on the B&O in WWII.

Travis Harry
Assistant Curator of Operations

A Monumental Inconvenience

2008-09-30T14:41:00.001-04:00

The hot summer of 1830 saw the end in sight for the final stretches of track being laid between Mt. Clare and Ellicott’s Mills. Great stone viaducts had been constructed and earth carefully moved to perch the railroad’s right of way on a shelf above the meandering Patapsco River. Immediately beyond Ellicott’s Mills, where the Oliver Viaduct crossed the Frederick Turnpike (Main Street) and construction had begun on the B&O’s first purpose built depot (Ellicott City Station), lay a giant rock.

Considering the incredible tasks performed by teams of laborers to get the railroad this far one might consider getting past an outcropping of rock might not be too much of a challenge. This steep incline leading down to the river bed, however, had a virtual wall of hard granite protruding nearly perpendicular to the face of the hillside, blocking the right of way with no way around. We can only imagine the schemes plotted to remove this obstacle. In the end the engineers and laborers chose to get through the great rock by excavating a vertical slice out of it leaving a monumental tower of granite on the river side of the tracks. The result was a curious spectacle that attracted much attention and even became a tourist attraction of sorts for many years.

This unusual piece of engineering handiwork was named Tarpeian Rock after a steep cliff on the southern summit of Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Forum in Ancient Rome. The Roman rock was used as an execution site. Murderers and traitors, if convicted by the courts were flung from the cliff to their deaths and many who had a mental or significant physical disability also suffered the same fate as they were thought to have been cursed by the gods. While, hopefully, no one was ever flung to their death off this rock it was a notable feature of the landscape on the B&O described in some mid-19^th century travelogues and depicted in the accompanying engraving. It stood for almost thirty years before the railroad removed the entire granite pillar to make way for a wider track bed.

At about 2:00 o’clock PM on August 28, 1830 a group of the B&O Railroad’s luminaries were poised to watch director Robert Oliver ceremoniously lay the keystone of the viaduct about to be named for him. Attending were Philip E. Thomas, president; John H. B. Latrobe, counsel; a reporter and Peter Cooper who had transported the dignitaries from Baltimore behind his little steam locomotive that, on this day, set record breaking speed at 18 miles per hour. Philip E. Thomas presided over the ceremonies congratulating the contractor for his performance and the town citizens for their patience. What Thomas failed to mention that day was that a several laborers had been killed three days earlier when a car full of excavated stone from the Tarpeian Rock rolled off the end of temporary track onto the workmen below.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

St. Elizabeths No. 4 Steam Locomotive

2008-09-24T13:19:00.002-04:00

On October 4-5, 2008 the Museum’s excursion train will be powered by St. Elizabeths No. 4 steam locomotive. “St. E”, as it is popularly known, was the last steam locomotive built by the H.K. Porter Company for domestic use in 1950. The locomotive was ordered by St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. to shuttle coal from the mainline to the hospital’s giant heating plant. St. Elizabeths was a Federal mental hospital that opened in 1855. One might wonder why the hospital chose a steam locomotive when diesels had eclipsed steam power by this date. It was a nod of the head to their longtime heating plant supervisor who simply wasn’t ready to tackle diesel technology when he knew steam engines inside out.

St. E was built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by the H.K. Porter Company--America’s largest steam locomotive manufacturer. Between 1866 and 1950 this company built nearly 8,000 locomotives. This locomotive, known as a 0-4-0T or “tank engine” carried its water in a saddle tank wrapped around the top of the boiler instead of employing a tender. This reduced the size of the locomotive for tight operations, and the extra weight over the driving wheels provided better traction to carry heavy loads. As constructed by Porter it has 44” drivers, 16” x 24” cylinders and an operating pressure of 180 lbs.per square inch.

In 1958, when St. Elizabeths converted their heating plant to fuel oil, the locomotive was transferred to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then to the U.S. Army as a training locomotive in Newport News and Fort Eustis, Virginia. The B&O Railroad Museum acquired the locomotive in 1980; it was restored to operating condition in 2001, suffered damage from the Roundhouse roof collapse in 2003, restored and returned to service in 2005.

Enjoy your ride!

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Mark Twain Visits Ellicott City Station

2008-09-04T14:10:00.001-04:00

It was that on the 10th of June, 1909 after traveling from New York on the B&O’s Royal Blue and transferring to a local train at Camden Station, that Mark Twain found himself walking through the Ellicott City Station. Passing through the Main Waiting Room, down the narrow stairs and out to the street he met a carriage dispatched to transport him up to Catonsville where he would be the guest speaker at the commencement exercises for
Saint Timothy’s School for Girls.

His address that day was short, to the point and typical Twain:

“I don't know what to tell you girls to do. Mr. Martin has told you everything you ought to do, and now I must give you some don'ts.

There are three things which come to my mind which I consider excellent advice:

First, girls, don't smoke--that is, don't smoke to excess. I am seventy- three and a half years old, and have been smoking seventy-three of them. But I never smoke to excess--that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

Second, don't drink--that is, don't drink to excess.

Third, don't marry--I mean, to excess.

Honesty is the best policy. That is an old proverb; but you don't want ever to forget it in your journey through life.”

This was to be Mark Twain’s last public address. He passed away 10 months later.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director

Mt. Clare Telegrapher John Edward Spurrier

2008-09-02T11:56:00.001-04:00

The period ink inscription on the back of this post Civil War period tin type photograph indicates that this young gentleman is John Edward Spurrier who was the telegrapher at Mt. Clare. In those days the little trapezoidal brick Mt. Clare Depot (which replaced the first 1831 wooden station in 1851 and is still preserved as a part of the B&O Railroad Museum) still served some Baltimore passengers as well as freight trains alongside the new big city depot Camden Station located several blocks east.

John E. Spurrier began his career during the Civil War in 1862 as the telegraph operator along the B&O line near Mount Airy, Maryland before being transferred to the little depot at Mt. Clare in Baltimore. Though physically small, the telegraph office inside Mt. Clare Depot held an important post. It was the only telegraph office for the B&O’s huge Mt. Clare shop complex where, during this period, more than 2,000 workers plied their trades building and maintaining the B&O Railroad.

John Spurrier was not the first of his family to work for the B&O. His grandfather, Thomas, was an engineer on a “Grasshopper” locomotive that operated between Mount Airy, Maryland and Frederick, Maryland in the 1840s and his father, Edward, was an operating official in Baltimore.

It’s rare to find a photograph from this period that has both the subject’s name and occupation. Without someone’s forethought, this wistful young man and his story would have been lost to the ages. Maybe it’s worth going through your box of family photographs one wintry night and jotting down some names and, even, a few interesting facts about your relative’s life and times…you never know.

Courtney B. Wilson

Executive Director