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    The B & O Railroad: A Brief History in Time
    The B & O Railroad: A Brief History in Time
    The B & O Railroad: A Brief History in Time
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The B & O Railroad: A Brief History in Time

    By Eugene Weiser

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    About this ebook

    The History of American Railroads series takes you through the trials and tribulations faced by the influential railroads that formed America. The first book in the series discusses the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from beginning until it was absorbed by the CSX railroad.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEugene Weiser
    Release dateJan 13, 2013
    ISBN9781301519613
    The B & O Railroad: A Brief History in Time
    Author

    Eugene Weiser

    Golf Course Superintendent. Love growing grass. Enjoying the outdoors is the best part of the job. Seeing other people enjoy the course is the best feeling in the world.

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      Book preview

      The B & O Railroad - Eugene Weiser

      The History of American Railroads

      Series 1

      The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

      A Brief History in Time

      The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

      A Brief History in Time

      Series 1

      Written By: Eugene Weiser

      Copyright

      The History of the American Railroads

      The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: A Brief History in Time

      Series 1

      Eugene Weiser

      Published by Dragonwick Publishing at Smashwords

      Copyright 2013 Eugene Weiser

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

      A Brief History of the Railway System in America

      The United States, as we know it today. is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of fallow land into fruitful farms, while the other provided the transportation that moved the crops to distant markets.

      Before these inventions became available, Americans crossed the Alleghenies, reached the Mississippi Valley, and had even broken through to the Pacific coast. In a thousand years or so, the United States might conceivably have become a far-reaching, straggling, loosely jointed Roman Empire, depending entirely upon its oceans, internal watercourses, and imperial highways for such economic and political integrity as it might achieve

      However, a great marvel of the nineteenth century occurred, the building of a new nation, reaching more than three thousand miles from coast to coast. This gave sustenance to more than one hundred million free people, and diffusing among them the necessities and comforts of civilization largely than the world had ever known before is explained by the development of agricultural machinery and the railroad.

      The railroad is conceived from the application of two fundamental ideas--one the use of a mechanical means of developing speed, the other the use of a smooth running surface to reduce friction. Though these two principles are today combined, they were originally distinct. In fact, there were railroads long before there were steam engines or locomotives.

      If we seek the real predecessor of the modern railroad track, we must go back three hundred years to the wooden rails on which were drawn the little cars used in English collieries to carry the coal from the mines to tidewater.

      The natural history of this invention is clear enough. The driving of large coal wagons along the public highway made deep ruts in the road, and some ingenious person began repairing the damage by laying wooden planks in the furrows. The coal wagons drove over this crude roadbed so successfully that certain proprietors started constructing special planked roadways from the mines to the river mouth. Logs, forming what we now call ties, were placed crosswise at intervals of three or four feet, and upon these supports thin rails, also of wood, were laid lengthwise.

      So effectively did this arrangement reduce friction that a single horse could now draw a large wagon filled with coal--an operation which two or three teams, lunging over muddy roads, formerly had great difficulty in doing. In order to lengthen the life of the road, a thin sheeting of iron was presently laid upon the wooden rail.

      The next improvement was an attempt to increase the durability of the wagons by making the wheels of iron. It was not, however, until 1767, when the first rails were cast entirely of iron with a flange at one side to keep the wheel steadily in place, that the modern roadbed in all its fundamental principles made its appearance. This was only two years after Watt had patented his first steam engine, and it was nearly fifty years before Stephenson built his first locomotive. The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion, as was the ship.

      Just as vessels had existed for ages before the introduction of mechanical power, so the railroad bad been a familiar sight in the mining districts of England for at least two centuries before the invention of Watt really gave it wings and turned it to wider uses. In this respect, the progress of the railroad resembles that of the automobile, which had existed in crude form long before the invention of the gasoline engine made it practically useful.

      The B & O Railroad: The Early Years

      The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It was developed mostly because the City of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal and another canal that being proposed by Pennsylvania, which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Construction in New York State of the Erie Canal began in 1817; when the canal opened in 1825, it immediately cut the cost of Midwest freight transport from $100/ton to $10/ton. Shippers chose the cheaper route through New York, and almost overnight, the port of Baltimore found itself yearning for business. Washington, DC felt the effects too, and began construction of the C&O canal.

      The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states, as New York had done with the Erie Canal in 1820. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation. Their answer was to build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world.

      Faced with transport competition from both north and south, Baltimore city leaders met in 1826 to devise a solution to the rapidly declining demand for their port. Rather than a canal, the group came up with a then daring, innovative plan: they would build a 300-mile Rail Road to the Ohio River. At that time, the longest railroad in the world was about 25 miles long and was primarily a tramway inside a mine.

      This situation led to the development of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Two men--Philip E. Thomas and George Brown, were the pioneers of this great undertaking. They

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