Baltimore and Ohio Railroad

The first true US rail carrier, chartered in 1827. Construction of the line began in 1828, and in 1830 a service was inaugurated to Ellicott's Mills, 21 km/13 mi west of Baltimore. Horses pulled the first trains, but were quickly replaced by the Tom Thumb, the first railway engine to operate regularly in the USA. Over the next 30 years, the Baltimore and Ohio extended westward to the Ohio River, and then Cincinnati and St Louis. After the Civil War, the network expanded further, with lines running to the major cities of Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York.

The Baltimore and Ohio was designed to bring back through Baltimore westbound traffic that had been lost to New York's new Erie Canal. Although it encountered early financial difficulties, in the 1840s, it was able to establish a branch to Washington DC (along which, in 1844, the first US telegraph line was strung). The railway finally reached the Ohio River (at Wheeling, then in Virginia, now in West Virginia) in 1852, by way of what was to become West Virginia's Eastern panhandle and Cumberland, in western Maryland. During the Civil War, this route remained under the control of Northern forces, and the railway became an important carrier for the Union. In the 1960s the Baltimore and Ohio was taken over by the Chesapeake and Ohio (founded 1868), a regional line noted chiefly as a coal carrier; the two networks became part of the extensive Chessie System. In 1980 this merged with the Seaboard Coast Line and other southeastern carriers (including the Louisville and Nashville, founded in 1850) to form the even larger CSX system.

The Baltimore and Ohio was preceded as the very first railway in the USA by a short line between Philadelphia and Columbia, Pennsylvania, which was completed in 1823. The B&O's first engine was designed by a New York inventor, Peter Cooper. It pushed a small car with 18 passengers and covered the 21 km to Ellicott's Mills in one hour and fifteen minutes.