Caboose: (Satellite)
I recognize the name Ellicott City as the terminus for the B&O when Tom Thumb raced a horse. [Ammerican-Rails via Dennis DeBruler]
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| Street View, Jul 2019 |
I think this building was the freight house.
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| 3D Satellite, looking East |
The building to the North was the original station.
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| Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum posted On Saturday at 1pm, Join the B&O Ellicott City Station Museum for a free guided tour. Learn about the history of how Ellicott City became the terminus of the first 13 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, with a guided tour of the oldest railroad station in the country. Tours are free. |
This view taught me that the above photo is rather old because the tree has grown a lot.
The sign in the eaves, "Ellicott Mills," was the original name of the town.
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| Street View, Jun 2022 |
The sign in the eaves, "Ellicott Mills," was the original name of the town.
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| Street View, Nov 2021 |
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| HowardCountyMD "Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968, the B&O Ellicott City Station is the oldest surviving railroad station in the country. Built in 1831, Ellicott City (then Ellicott’s Mills) was the first stop on the B&O Main Line, 13 miles outside of Baltimore. The station was originally designed to handle freight, but eventually transitioned to also serve passengers by 1857. Although passenger service was discontinued in 1949, freight service continued until 1972. The station was preserved and restored by local preservation groups to continue to share the important role the B&O Railroad played in local industrial history." |
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| Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum posted Join us on Saturday [Apr 15, 2023] for a FREE guided tour of the B&O Ellicott City Station Museum. Learn about how Ellicott City became the terminus of the first 13 miles of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, with a tour of the oldest railroad station in the country. Meet in the museum gift shop at 1pm. Tom Dunne shared |
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| Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum posted As it’s the first day of the month, we are celebrating another B&O Railroad first. The B&O Railroad was the first double tracked railroad to be completed in the United States. In February of 1831, the B&O Railroad would complete its secondary track between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills. This was a major achievement because it would enable safe and efficient movement of rail traffic on the early railroad. The dual tracks would enable more freight traffic to be moved between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills by the railroad and this helped to grow the prosperity of Ellicott’s Mills. The engineers of the B&O Railroad had originally intended for the line to be double tracked from the beginning but when the railroad first opened for public traffic in May 1830, only one of the lines between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills had been completed. The difficult and labor-intensive method of building the railroad using strap rail with heavy granite stone foundations had severely delayed construction. This meant that construction of the secondary track that would enable the safe passing of rail traffic was not fully completed until several months later in February 1831. The early strap rail design of the original tracks would eventually be replaced with modern iron rails. The B&O’s Old Main Line would remain dual tracked until the 1950s. By then regular passenger service on the Old Main Line had ended and the freight traffic on the line was declining. The Old Main Line was reduced to a single track to increase the clearance through the tunnels along the line. The B&O would also introduce Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) systems to ensure rail safety. Today portions of the former secondary track of the Old Main Line remain as they are used as passing sidings to enable the safe movement of freight trains as they make their way along the Old Main Line. Image: A view from the Platform of the Ellicott City Station circa the 1940s-50s showing the dual track structure of the B&O’s Old Main Line. |
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| borailroad "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." |
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This is the post that taught me about this museum.
Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum posted two images with the comment:
Please note that the Ellicott City Station Museum will be closed for essential maintenance from Feb. 8th-12th. Thank you for your understanding.On this day in history, 7th February 1904, the Great Baltimore Fire began. This fire was the most devastating in Baltimore’s history. The fire began on the morning of 7th of February and would burn until 5pm the next day. The fire started in the Hurst building, a dry goods store, within minutes all the surrounding buildings were ablaze as the fire swept rapidly through downtown Baltimore. The battle against the raging inferno involved 1,231 firefighters. These firefighters included volunteers from the surrounding counties and outlying towns of Maryland. It is likely that members of the Volunteer Fire Department of Ellicott City also came to Baltimore to assist in fighting the blaze. The B&O Railroad played a vital role in bringing firefighters and fire equipment from nearby cities such as Frederick and Washington, DC. However, due to the lack of standardization of fire equipment, firefighters from outside of Baltimore found that their hoses and pump equipment were not compatible with the water systems in Baltimore, limiting their effectiveness.The Great Baltimore Fire burned 70 city blocks of downtown Baltimore with over 1500 buildings destroyed in the blaze. One of the greatest losses was the destruction of the B&O headquarters on the corner of Baltimore and Calvert streets. This 1888 building was designed in the ornate Second Empire architectural style that symbolized the grandeur of the B&O Railroad. Sadly, many of the irreplaceable records and documents from the first decades of B&O Railroad were lost in this fire. A loss that is still felt by historians to this day.The Great Baltimore Fire was the most destructive fire in the United States since the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It destroyed much of Baltimore’s historic 19th century era Downtown and caused an estimated $200 million in property damage. The destruction of fire led to a massive reconstruction effort. In 1906, the Baltimore Sun reported that “one of the great disasters of modern time had been converted into a blessing.” The fire spurred a massive downtown urban renewal project, the city built new safer fireproofed buildings, modern sewerage systems and wider streets designed to facilitate streetcar traffic. In 1906 The B&O Railroad would complete its new headquarters building, a 13-story Beaux Arts style skyscraper on Charles Street. The new B&O Railroad headquarters was declared to be “a monument to the city’s progressiveness” that represented the rebirth of Baltimore in the aftermath of the fire.Images: The old Baltimore and Ohio Headquarters building destroyed in great fire of 1904The ruins of downtown Baltimore in the aftermath of the fire (Enoch Pratt Free Library / State Library Resource Center)
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad History shared
Edward Bommer: BThe B&O office building on the left, burned down in the early1900's with the loss of nearly all the company's records. The site after that fire is the photo on the right. It could well be that gas was the issue and the building had been piped for gas lighting throughout when built in the late 1800's. Oddly at time, many people felt that those new "Edison lights" from electricity were more dangerous than gas. They could shock someone if they touched it wrong, or if it sparked from a short circuit that could start a fire. Gas could be easily shut off at the light. But was it always really SHUT OFF? Most working folks simply blew out their lit coal oil lamp to turn off the light at home and doing that unthinkingly at a gas-lit office may have been more common than we'd like to think. From the wreckage of the B&O office building, signs of an explosion are visible.
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Two photos posted by Marty Benard with the comment: "These are scans of the slides of the late Bill Howes. He was a very interesting railroader. If you didn't know Bill, you my want to look at this from TRAINS: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/.../william-f-howes-jr.../" 1974
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| a Dale V Rockwell: Before Baldwin-style. Marty Bernard: Dale V Rockwell Please explain. Dale V Rockwell: Marty Bernard E. Francis Baldwin was the B&O's Head Architect from 1872 until early 1900s. He designed most of what B&O built during that time period. His work is distinctive and stylish. I think that freight house is Baldwin. |
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Walter Rowe posted three photos with the comment: "Ellicott City Station, B&O Railroad Museum"
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| Baltimore & Ohio Ellicott City Station shared a Museum post On July 24,1868, Ellicott City witnessed one of its worst disasters — the Great Patapsco Valley Flood of 1868. The morning of July 24 began much like any other day in Ellicott City. However, an enormous storm cloud had settled on the Patapsco Valley, and it would bring with it torrential rain. That morning, over 18 inches of rain fell in under an hour, creating a torrent of surging flood water that tore apart the communities of the Patapsco Valley. At 9:15am, the westbound mail train from Baltimore departed the Ellicott City Station. About a mile west of the city, this train would be swept up by an avalanche of flood water from the Patapsco Valley that would engulf the locomotive and its train cars. The train’s conductor, engineer and fireman were forced to abandon their locomotive and scramble up the steep walls of the railroad embankment for safety. The flood of 1868 did enormous damage to the B&O Railroad. The railroad line was left a twisted damaged mess along the Patapsco Valley. The Patterson Viaduct, which spanned the Patapsco River at Ilchester and was one of the original stone bridges of the Old Main Line, was irreparably damaged. It would take the railroad two weeks to complete temporary repairs so the line could reopen for limited operations. Permanent rebuilding and repair of the line and its bridges took the railroad over two years to complete. Ellicott City suffered extreme damage from the flood. The Patapsco River rose at a rate of 5 feet in 10 minutes, it was reported that the flood waters reached as high as 40 feet. The B&O Ellicott City Station building would suffer severe flood damage. "Harpers Weekly" reported that, "The whole lower part of Ellicott City was flooded, goods were washed out of stores into the street and with furniture out of houses all lying in tangled heaps, with logs, trees, stones and the debris of houses and bridges." It is estimated that at least 40-50 people died in the Great Flood of 1868. Sadly, it would not be the last flood to hit the community of Ellicott City, as later floods occurred in 1923, 1956, 1972, 2016 and 2018. Image: The Great Flood in Maryland -- scene at the Patapsco Mills at the height of the flood, by Theodore R. Davis, Harpers Ferry, August 8, 1868. |
The Patapsco Mills has grown and it looks like it is still operational. I wonder if it still gets rail service. The bridge is still standing for the industrial spur.
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| 3D Satellite |
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