Feb. 28, 1827: The state of Maryland charters the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company as the first U.S. common carrier railway. The idea was to help merchants in Baltimore compete with their counterparts in New York, who had easy access to western commerce via the Erie Canal. The project nearly foundered early on when it was discovered that railroad locomotives would not float. But the promoters quickly regrouped and began constructing railroad tracks aimed at the Ohio River. When they got there in 1852, they were reminded of their early failure and realized that the trains would have to stop short of the river. Soon, however, bridges carried the tracks not only over the Ohio River, but also the Mississippi River, the Missouri River, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains—all the way to the Pacific Ocean, where engineers discovered that, in addition to being poor river-borne conveyances, locomotives were also unseaworthy. Nonetheless, the B&O thrived during the great railway era and, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, ended up as part of present-day CSX Corp. CSX boasts of its modern network and, according to its Web site, operates a “fleet” of more than 3,700 locomotives. These people are nothing if not persistent. —
Jeffrey Kanige
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