Garrett County MD: B&O Bond (BD) Tower and Seventeen Mile Grade

(Satellite)

Stanley Short posted
The date is March 21, 1976 and we are at Baltimore & Ohio's BD Tower at Bond, MD.  Bond was located about midway down Seventeen Mile Grade on B&O's West End.  If I recall correctly, it wasn't the easiest place to get to.  One thing that I do recall is that there was a runaway track behind the tower.  The switch to the track was behind me about 100 yards up the grade.
Tim Shanahan shared

4x4icon
The Seventeen Mile Grade went from Piedmont up to the Eastern Continental Divide at Altamont. Back in the steam era, the mainline had three tracks because of helper traffic. Bond helped switch traffic among the tracks. And Bond was one of two towers on the grade that controlled a turnout to a runaway track.

To get a rough idea of where the grade was in Maryland, I used Google Maps to draw a blue line. It uses roads instead of railroads, but it is a good start.

Satellite

Next, I checked out a topo map to get a more accurate location of the railroad route.

1952/52 Cumberland Quad @ 250,000

The 4x4icon map shows that Bond was near Savage River Dam. So, I got an aerial of that area. The dam is still under construction in this aerial.

Construction started in 1939 and was completed in Jan 1951. [dnr]

Mar 21, 1946 @ 27,200; AR1CA0000010175