Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, the State of Maryland granted the B&O a charter to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., in 1831, and the Washington Branch was opened in 1835. This line joined to the original mainline at Relay, Maryland, crossing the Patapsco River on the Thomas Viaduct (which remains one of the B&O's signature structures). This line was partially funded by the state of Maryland, and was operated separately until the 1870s, with Maryland receiving a 25 percent cut of gross passenger receipts. The B&O's charter also forbade further taxation of the railroad, and that no-tax provision was upheld in the 1840s after Baltimore City tried to tax it. This Washington Branch line was built in stone, much like the original mainline. By this time, however, strap rail was no longer used for new construction. Most of the stone bridges on the Old Main Line did not last long, being washed out by the periodic flooding of the Patapsco River and replaced at first by Bollman Truss bridges. The Annapolis and Elk Ridge Railroad to Annapolis connected to this line at Annapolis Junction in 1840. As an unwritten condition for the charter, it was understood that the state of Maryland would not charter any competing line between Baltimore and Washington, and no such charters were approved until well after the American Civil War, when the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired a railroad on the Delmarva Peninsula, which had the power to build short branch lines, so it was able to connect to Washington through Bowie, Maryland.

The B&O also wanted access to Pittsburgh and coal fields in western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Although the directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad sought a monopoly in their state, delays in laying track to Pittsburgh led the Pennsylvania legislature in 1846 to require construction to be completed within 10 years, else competition would be allowed. The Pennsylvania Railroad finished its trans-Allegheny track with two years to spare. Denied a direct route to Pittsburgh, the B&O supported development of the Pittsburgh and Connellsville Railroad, under the leadership of former B&O Chief Engineer Benjamin Latrobe, eventually gaining full control when the final connection to Cumberland, Maryland, was completed in 1871.

In the early 20th century, F. A. Durban, a former president of the DT&I and Ann Arbor railroads, served as general counsel until his sudden death in 1915 at age 60.

Early engineering

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

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

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

First telegraph line

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

Innovations

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

Conflicts in the early years

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

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

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

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

American Civil War

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

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