Mount Clare Shops
39°17′08″N 76°38′00″W / 39.285457°N 76.633437°W The Mount Clare Shops is the oldest
History
The Mount Clare site was a portion of an estate owned by Charles Carroll (barrister), a distant cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. (See Mount Clare (Maryland).) The initial operations of the B&O used horsecars, and the earliest facilities on the Mt. Clare site included a depot and stables for horses. This was one of the earliest passenger stations in the United States.[3]
Following the 1830 manufacture of the first U.S.
The B&O built an ironworks at Mt. Clare in 1850.[4]: 363 The first iron railroad bridges, designed by Wendel Bollman, were built in the Mt. Clare shops in the 1850s. A roundhouse, engine service and car shops, and a new depot were also built at Mt. Clare during this period.[5]
After the
Mt. Clare shops employed 1,000 workers by 1852 and over 3,000 in the 1920s.[5]
Between 1900 and 1920, the B&O erected a large locomotive shop,
The railroad built its last steam locomotive at Mt. Clare in 1948. During the 1950s, as the railroad increased its use of diesel locomotives, there was less demand for steam locomotive and machine shop work at Mt. Clare. The railroad abandoned use of the circular car shop in 1953 and made it available for use by the museum.
In 1962, a fire destroyed the Mt. Clare locomotive erecting shop.[8] The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) purchased the B&O, also in 1962, and subsequently locomotive repairs were handled at the B&O shops in Cumberland, Maryland. Only car repairs were continued at Mt. Clare, until 1974, when all shop work on the site was discontinued. By this time many of the buildings were in disrepair, and most were demolished by 1976, except for those used by the museum.[1][8] CSX Transportation, the successor railroad company, sold portions of the property, and 40 acres (160,000 m2) of the Mt. Clare site have been retained by the museum.[5]
See also
References
- ^ a b United States National Park Service. Washington, DC. Historic American Engineering Record (HAER). "Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: Mount Clare Shops." HAER No. MD-6A. 1984.
- ^ "Baltimore and Ohio Transportation Museum and Mount Clare Station". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on March 8, 2009. Retrieved October 5, 2008.
- ^
Federal Writers' Project (1940), Maryland: A Guide to the Old Line State, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 250, ISBN 978-1-60354-019-3
- ^ a b
Dilts, James D. (1996), The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad, 1828-1853, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, ISBN 978-0-8047-2629-0
- ^ a b c d e
Cunningham, Shawn (1994), The B&O Railroad Museum, Baltimore, MD: B&O Railroad Museum, p. 10, ISBN 1-886248-00-1
- ^ United States National Park Service. Washington, DC. Historic American Engineering Record (HAER). "Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: Mount Clare Passenger Car Shop." HAER No. MD-6. Written historical and descriptive data, p.2. 1984.
- ^ Note: Other publications list various heights for the shop, ranging from 120 ft (37 m) to 135 ft.
- ^ a b
Harwood, Jr., Herbert H. (1979), Impossible Challenge: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in Maryland, Baltimore, MD: Barnard, Roberts & Co., p. 180, ISBN 978-0-934118-17-0