Baltimore, MD: CSX/B&O & NS/Pennsy Bayview Railyards and (BA) & Bay Towers

CSX: (Satellite)

B&O BA Tower: (Satellite, wrong! Based on item 3 on map in RailfanGuides)

B&O BA Tower: (Satellite, based on Dave Henderson's photo below)

Pennsy Bay Tower: (Satellite)

NS: (Satellite)

The Pennsy locomotives were serviced in the Orangeville Yard, which was just east of the Pennsy Bayview Yard.

B&O BA Tower

Darren Reynolds posted
We're looking at B&Os "BA" tower Bayview yard Baltimore Maryland.  No date
Bruce Elliott Railroad Slides Inc/Pocahontas Co. Society of Model Engineers: Looks like two WB's and the tail end of an EB.

 

Bill Rettberg Jr. posted
Two  Fairbanks Morse H16-44s bringing an eastbound transfer run into B&O's Bay View yard in Northeast Baltimore. 1966
Daren Reynolds shared
BA" tower (Bayview) Baltimore, Maryland

Darren Reynolds posted five photos with the comment: "B&Os 'BA' tower (Bay View yard) Baltimore, MD."

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A gathering of B&O power at "BA" Tower Bayview Baltimore, Maryland
John Peters: Is that a train order board ?
Wk Dads: John Peters yes

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Western Maryland f7's passing "BA" tower Note: "BA"tower train order signal

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Baltimore bound train passing"BA" tower March23,1980

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"BA"tower (Bayview yard) Baltimore, MD 1/4/75

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Old "BA' tower 1938 (Bayview) Baltimore, MD.
Tom Kadesch: PRR catenaries visible in background on NEC.
[Is this the Pennsy BA Tower?]

 

Dave Henderson commented on Darren's post

CSX looking West:

Street View, Nov 2022

CSX is straight ahead and we see part of the NS yard on the right.

Street View, looking East

NS from I-95 looking West:

Street View, Nov 2019

The NS yard on the west side still has most of its tracks, but the part on the east side now has a lot of storage space.

1953 Baltimore East Quad @ 24,000

This was the main railyard for Pennsy in Baltimore whereas B&O had yards all over town. [RailfanGuides] That would explain why Pennsy had a roundhouse here. So far, the only other B&O yard that I have noted is Curtis Bay. See RailfanGuides-map for the locations of the other yards. (Trains also has a map)

1953 Baltimore East Quad @ 24,000

CSX/B&O on the left (north side) and NS/Pennsy on the right.

BaltMusIndustry

Both of the yards have most of their tracks. That is becoming rather rare.

3D Satellite

This is one of the better looking CSX buildings that I have seen.

3D Satellite

This is the NS intermodal yard. Most of the land is an automotive facility. [NS-intermodal]

Satellite

Note that North is to the left.

MultiModalWays, p6

 

RailfanGuides

CSX - Bayview Yard

GPS: 39.2986 -76.5505

One of two yards on the CSX mainline between Philadelphia and DC, the other is Winans yard on the south side of Baltimore.  Traffic in and out of Grays yard, the Dundalk Marine Terminal, and transfers to the Canton RR move thru here.  Through trains just keep on movin thru.

RailfanGuides

NS - Bayview Yard

GPS: 39.2967 -76.5417

Norfolk Southern's Bayview yard is NS's main yard for Baltimore.

Amtrak's NEC comes thru on the north side of the yard.

BAY tower, still standing, is about where the "D" in "DC" is.

Tracks to Canton yard veer off just off to the left side of the map.

DC and Manassas are off to the left, and NS's freights share the NEC after hours. 

The north end of the yard is not used as much as it used to be.  Very little can be found there any more.

The yard office and the NS Police are located off Lombard St, and you are forewarned not to enter the yard at any point, the police are most non-forgiving!

The NS Bayview yard is where a conductor was killed in Feb 2019. The conductor was riding on the side of a car even though the yardmaster reminded the engineer that the conductor should not ride on the railcars. And "no riding" in close-clearance spaces is in the rule book. The conductor's railcar came around a curve and there was 9" between his car and the adjacent cars. The NTSB found that the rules were not clear on what parts of the yard had close-clearance spaces and that their training did not address the issue. [cbsnews]

John Hopkins wants the NS Bayview Yard land for expansion of their medical campus. [BaltimoreInnerSpace]

Pennsy BAY Tower

Darren Reynolds posted five photos with the comment: "PRRs 'Bay' tower (Bayview) Baltimore, Maryland"

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"Bay" tower with 2 Amtrak GG-1s passing 1977....

Photo by: Rich Hafer

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"Bay" tower on the right is Bayview yard..2016

Photo by: Michael Brotzman

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Operator Rich Hafer At " Bay" tower April 1985

Photo by: Bob Uhland

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"Bay" tower is now just a shell 2015

Photo by: Michael Brotzman

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Looking south at "Bay" tower 2003

Photo by: Michael Brotzman

All images from North American interlockings States A to Z and Canada ...

Center, ND: BNI Coal Company and Legacy/Liberty Bell/Ace of Spades & Big Jake Page 757s

East Coal Mine: (Satellite)

Minnkota Power Plant: (Satellite) Obviously, this is a mine mouth power plant. That seems to be what makes lignite coal economical.

West Coal Mine: (Satellite)

See "Moving Page 757 Draglines Across the Country" for more information on this dragline.

Jud Swanston posted a 0:54 video
Nate Nowak: 757 model was the largest Page, then P&H bought them. This machine was the first one P&H built. Notice it doesn't have the old style Page walking mechanism.
Jud Swanston: It was originally the ace of spades , then the liberty belle, in Mississippi now named Legacy in North Dakota.
Randy Hollingsworth: It’s a Page with all of the upgrades that you could pretty much do to one a few years ago. It was converted to AC drive when it was erected in Mississippi, along with a larger diameter tub.
Jud Swanston: Randy Hollingsworth we left the tub in Mississippi as we had just put a new tub under our original 757 , put that tub under it.
Travis Hill: I've heard there are 300 years of work and reserves...
Paul Pillau: It didn’t log many hours in Mississippi, the cut down crew must have had a clean job for once!
[It was the Ace of Spades in Great Britain with 65cyd, the Liberty Bell in Mississippi with 87cy, and Legacy in ND with 83cy. The standard capacity for a 757 was 75cy, but the Ace was undersized. MS had softer dirt, and ND uses a better bucked design.]

Jeremy Kelley commented on Jud's post
I kept “the liberty belle” exercised here in kemper Mississippi until it was sold . Paul Brooks was an operator on it at kemper.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Jud's post
I presume that this was from when it was being erected next to Big Jake, which was the oldest operating Page 757. The repair costs for Big Jake were estimated to be comparable to the $31m it took to move the newest Page 757.
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.1083752,-101.3478779,281m/data=!3m1!1e3

0:24 video
"The electrically operated dragline stands 286 feet high, weighs 11 million pounds and required 214 trucks to deliver it from Mississippi to the mine outside of Center."
[This video confirms that the west mine is also BNI because it had the two back-to-back draglines.]

0:17 video
BNI paid $31m to replace their 45-year old Big Jake Page 757 with Legacy. Legacy is the newest and Big Jake was the oldest operating Page 757. The process of transporting it from Mississippi Power started in Apr 2021. "BNI has two other draglines -- Liberty, and a smaller machine named Big Sandy."

I found the other two draglines, but I don't know which is which.

Satellite

Satellite

1:42 video @ 0:21
It was commissioned in Aug 8, 2022, by breaking a bottle against the bucket.

minnkota
Legacy is equipped with state-of-the art AC motors with about 1,990 horsepower. (Minnkota/Michael Hoeft)
[This article is not just another copy & paste of the commissioning press release.]

Jud Swanston posted
Well my friends the original ace of spades is back in the dirt again 🤗🤗 now called Legacy

This is probably a different Ace of Spades, but it is also a P&H 757. I include it here because I could not find Stopswood. Based on the accents and a reference to largest dragline in "western Europe," I presume this was in the UK.

3:04 video @ 2:38
P&H 757 when she was at Stopswood 90's

Gordonsville, VA: CSX/C&O G Cabin

(Satellite)

Street View, Apr 2012

Jim Slater posted three photos with the comment: "Gordonsville, VA (CSX/ NS)    03-01-2023"

Kenneth E. Carden: Is there any freight traffic coming off the NS main via Gordonville or is only the tri-weekly Amtrak from Wash to Chicago.

Jim Slater: Kenneth E. Carden the short time I was there I didn’t see anything. But I believe today a short line runs between there and Doswell.

Jim Kelling: This was a C&O tower at the junction with the Southern Railway. 

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Jim Slater: To NS on the left, CSX on the right

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Jim Slater: CSX on the Right, Connection track on left to the NS in Orange, VA.
[I checked several topo maps and they all label the route between Gordonsville and Orange, VA, as C&O. And a USGS map labels it as CSX. Since that branch terminates with a connection to NS in Orange, maybe CSX sold that "spur" to NS.]

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Jim Slater: Old Hotel located across the tracks from the tower Gordonsville, VA

Stanley Short posted
Westbound Chesapeake & Ohio manifest No, 795 is about to go from the Piedmont SD to the Washington SD as it passes G Cabin in Gordonsville, VA on Sept. 22, 1984 with three B30-7s.

I was looking to see if the grain elevator in the background of Stanley's photo was still standing and discovered that a water tower might still be standing. The train is going from the southern leg to the western leg in this image.

Satellite

But the southern leg turns and becomes a southeastern leg whereas the western leg turns and becomes a southwestern leg.

1970 Gordonsville Quad @ 24,000

1949 Charlottesville Quad @ 250,000

Shano, WA: Old Grain Elevator and Wind Turbine Lay Down Yard

(Satellite)

Steven J. Brown posted
Columbia Basin SD9 610 (built 1957 as EJ&E 602 to MRL 610) on the Connell Turn at Shano, Washington - February 8, 2023.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Steven's post
A town that is just grain and wind.
GoogleMaps
The railroad was Northern Pacific. A USGS map indicates it is now Washington Central.

Satellite

Satellite

Satellite

Connell is northeast of the routes I found on the railroad map.

Central Washington

Pennsuco, FL: Titan America Limestone Quarry and Marion 7820 Assembly

(Satellite, I think the quarry is the "ponds" in this area)

A Marion 7820 that was disassembled at a coal mine in Somerset County, PA, is now being assembled at a limestone quarry "west of Miami, FL." 

William Oldani posted eleven photos with the comment: "Another Update on the Marion 7820 Erection down in Florida.   Setting the Swing Deck!    Photo Credit Gene Miller, Project Manager."

[A comment includes a video of taking the swing deck off.]

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Titian America has had a dragline running on the west side of Florida.

Satellite

Because of this job description, I think Titan America has bought the CEMEX-FEC quarry.

"We are seeking a Quarry Manager to be based at our Titan Pennsuco facility in Medley, Florida. The combined facility is the largest of its kind in Florida and one of the largest aggregates and cement operations in the US. This position offers exposure to a newly extended 3.6 mile overland conveyor and in-pit semi-mobile crushing system. In addition, the main processing plant was recently modernized and the two dragline mining extraction rate is in excess of 11 million tons per year....Implement the Dragline and Primary Crushing system reliability and efficiency plans (Marion 7820 & Page 732) in coordination with the Maintenance Manager." [lensa] The description implies they already have a couple of draglines on the site, but I could not find them in a satellite image.

Buffalo, NY:, Lackawanna, NY: Ore Docks and Brownhoists

(Satellite)

(Update: I thought these docks were along the canal in Buffalo. Now (Nov 2023), I think they were the Bethlehem Steel docks in Lackawanna.)

At the beginning of the 20th Century, the waterfront had both the old (Brownhoist) and new (Hulett) technologies for unloading ore from freighters.

Association for Great Lakes Maritime History posted

An image of Brown hoists unloading iron ore from the freighter E.J. Earling at Buffalo, New York, circa 1908 (Image Source: Library of Congress – Detroit Publishing Co. Collection). 

The equipment is clamsheel hoists built by the Brown Hoist Machinery Co. Beginning in the 1880s, Brown developed a variety machinery that revolutionized the unloading of iron ore from ships in the Great Lakes region.

Additional Historical Information – Brown Hoisting Machinery Co.

In 1880, Fayette Brown and his son, Alexander Ephraim Brown, founded the Brown Hoisting & Conveying Machinery Co. in Cleveland, Ohio. The firm was incorporated in 1893 and was renamed the Brown Hoisting Machinery Co. in 1900. 

Alexander Brown was a mechanical engineer who was focused on finding a better technology for unloading iron ore from Great Lakes freighters. The shipment of the region’s ore by water began in 1855. For the next 25 years, unloading a ship was a labor-intensive process. 

Workers would hand shovel iron ore from the top of the pile in the ship’s cargo hold up a multi-decked scaffold to the deck. The ore would then be hand shoveled into wheelbarrows that would be pushed down the vessel’s gangway and dumped in a dock stockpile or waiting rail car.

The only major improvement prior to 1880 had been the replacement of the scaffolding with skips that were lifted by derricks from the ship’s hold onto its deck. The ore, however, was still hand shoveled from the deck into wheelbarrows that were pushed down the gangway.  

In 1880, Brown revolutionized the unloading process by producing a cable tramway that carried skips of ore directly from the ship’s hold to the dockside stockpile or rail cars. An improved cableway and self-loading skips that resembled dragline buckets followed.

Under the brand name Brownhoist, Alexander Brown later developed the first clamshell type unloader featuring a 1.5-ton bucket suspended from a traveling bridge crane. By 1900, an estimated 75 percent of iron ore shipped on the Great Lakes was handled by Brownhoist equipment. 

In the decades that followed, Brownhoist went on to manufacture bridge, gantry, Portal-Pier (“whirley”), and locomotive cranes. The company also produced clamshell and dragline buckets and a wide range of machinery designed specifically for steel production and industrial material handling. 

Brown Hoisting Machinery merged with Industrial Works of Bay City, Mich. in 1927 to form the Industrial Brownhoist Corp. The new firm was headquartered in Bay City. After decades of growth, however, its business fell off sharply after World War II. 

In 1954, Industrial Brownhoist was sold to Penn-Texas Corp. which sold it five years later to a hotel group based in Miami Beach, Fla. As business continued to decline, the operation shrank to 40 employees and one plant in Bay City. 

In 1960, the operation was acquired by the American Hoist & Derrick Co. of St. Paul, Minn. After a relatively brief period of success under new ownership, what was now sole plant of the Industrial Brownhoist Division of American Hoist was permanently shut down in 1983.  

Information Source:

https://www.constructionequipment.com/.../alexander-brown...

[Additional text provides the freighter's history.]

ConstructionEquipment
"When conventional means of removing shot rock from the floor to the banks of the Chicago Drainage Canal proved uneconomical at $1.75 per cubic yard, several contractors approached Brownhoist for a solution. The result was the world’s first cantilever, or hammerhead, crane. Introduced in 1893, 11 of these cranes did the job for one-third that amount. They were resold for other uses after the project was finished, and one of them was later adapted as a dragline for construction of the New York Barge Canal. No other applications of these machines for excavation are known at this time, but mobile hammerhead cranes of various makes are known to have placed concrete at Grand Coulee, Friant and Folsom dams in the 1930s through 1950s, and hammerhead tower cranes are widely used today."
[Alexander E. Brown also invented the dragline and clamshell buckets.]

Association for Great Lakes Maritime History posted two photos with the comment:

Two images of the freighter William S. Mack being unloaded by Hulett Ship Unloaders at the Pennsylvania Railroad iron ore dock in Buffalo, New York, circa 1901-1910 (Image Source: Library of Congress – Detroit Publishing Co. Collection). Additional Historical Information – Hulett Ship Unloaders George Hulett, the inventor of the Hulett Ship Unloader, was born in 1846 in Conneaut, Ohio. His family moved in Cleveland shortly after his birth. After completing his education in 1864, Hulett ran a general store in Unionville, Ohio for many years but returned to Cleveland in 1881. The 1880s were a period of rapid change in the technology used to load and unload bulk cargo from ships in the Great Lakes region. In 1880, the Brown Hoist Machinery Co. of Cleveland introduced a fully mechanized system for moving iron ore from a ship’s hold to dockside. The system could scoop up and move up to 1.5 tons of ore at a time. Between 1887 and 1906, Hulett received several patents for a variety of industrial conveying and hoisting machinery. His greatest patents, however, were awarded in 1898 for what became known as the Hulett Ship Unloader and the bucket the machine needed to revolutionize the unloading process for shipments of iron ore. At first, the machine was merely theoretical, but Hulett was able to set up a meeting with steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was interested but wanted to see it work before buying one. Hulett was able convince a Cleveland-based company to take the leap of faith and build a Hulett Ship Unloader on spec at a cost of $45,000. In 1899, Carnegie and Charles Schwab, his company’s president, arrived in Cleveland for a demonstration of a prototype. They saw the steam-powered machine, which was said to resemble a grasshopper arm, on a gantry built over railroad tracks. The machine lowered its arm - overbalanced by 6,000 pounds so gravity powered its descent - into a ship’s hold. The bucket at the end of the arm, which had a clamshell opening, grabbed up 10 tons of iron ore and deposited into waiting rail cars. The entire process to grab and dump one the ore took about a minute. The first Hulett Ship Unloader was installed in Conneaut in 1899. Powered by steam, the machine had a bucket capable of moving 10 tons of ore at a time. In 1912, four second-generation Huletts were built on Whiskey Island in Cleveland. These units were powered by electricity and had buckets capable of handling up to 17 tons of ore at a time. The Whiskey Island machines significantly lowered the cost of receiving iron ore in Cleveland and helped make that city one of the major steel producing centers in the world. In the years that followed, Hulett Ship Unloaders came to dominate the handling of iron at ports in the Great Lake region, including Buffalo and Chicago. That dominance lasted until the 1970s and the widespread use of self-unloading vessels. As of 1999, six Hulett Ship Unloaders were still standing around the Great Lakes region including four at Whiskey Island. All were subsequently dismantled but two were carefully disassembled in hopes they might be reconstructed in the future as historic landmarks. Information Sources: https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/470 https://www.popularmechanics.com/.../hulett-unloader.../

[Additional text provides the freighter's history.]

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bygonely, 18th photo

I've never seen this kind of bulk unloader before.

bygonely, 36th photo, circa 1901

The caption on this photo called it a Thornberger hoist and confirmed that it was at the Lackawanna docks.

bygonely, 43rd photo

The Thornberger hoist was replaced by the Brown hoist.

bygonely, 44th photo, circa 1908.

Brian R. Wroblewski posted

Dennis DeBruler commented on Brian's post
A nice shot that shows how an articulated tug fits together. I fired up Google Earth to determine this shot is older than June 2014 because that is when today's dome appears. https://maps.app.goo.gl/waeapNiuxK2uAnLc7

Brian commented on Dennis' comment
correct I shot that in the summer of 2013.