If you haven't had enough, see also:
The B&O's 180th Anniversary: The B&O in Western PA, 1966
The B&O's 180th Anniversary: Martinburg, WV: 1858, 1976, 2006
Across Maryland History: The B&O Railroad's Early Days
| The B&O's 180th Anniversary: Martinburg, WV: 1858, 1976, 2006 |
|
| A priceless photograph of the Martinsburg rail facility taken about 150 years ago, possibly taken from the balcony of the station/hotel shown below. The absence of women suggests that the guys are all facility employees. Note the kid wearing a top hat standing in the foremost group. The locomotives are all Winans camels, designed by B&O's Ross Winans in the mid 1850s. They were called camels because the cab was on top of the boiler rather than at the end. None have survived. The buildings were destroyed in the Civil War. |
|
| A photo I took near the same spot in 1975 or 76. The Winans camels have been gone for 100 years and the B&O has been become part of the Chesapeake & Ohio's Chessie System. A Chessie diesel creeps between junky old cars and the roundhouse that was built after the Civil War. |
|
| A better view of the completely enclosed--and completely round--roundhouse. This and the roundhouse at the B&O RR Museum are the only two of their kind that exist. By 1976, after 100 years, the original wooden roof was replaced by the sheet-metal-clad dome you see here. |
|
| Another 1976 photo of Martinsburg's 1840 hotel / station. 1n the 1840s, trains stopped here their first night out of Baltimore; passengers detrained and slept in the hotel. Dinah would wake them up by blowing her horn the next morning when it was time to leave. You can see the alterations of many decades in its walls. It originally had a two-level porch out front. |
|
| And here a 2006 view of the station with the two-story porch being among things restored. Martinsburg is today the terminal of MARC commuter trains from DC. |
|
| 2006 finds the roundhouse and other shop buildings under restoration and on their way to becoming a museum. The modern CSX diesels that roll through the ghosts of those Winans Camels are so quiet that I almost stepped in front of this train as it was approaching. |
|
| As a bonus, a picture of a B&O freight racing across the bridge at Harpers Ferry in 1958 with my Mom in the foreground. With 60-speed film, my Dad's Kodak Pony was not fast enough to freeze the blue and gray engines with their black stripes. |
|
If you haven't had enough, see also: The B&O's 180th Anniversary: The B&O in Western PA, 1966 The B&O's 180th Anniversary: Martinburg, WV: 1858, 1976, 2006 Across Maryland History: The B&O Railroad's Early Days |