Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad

Company History: 1 of 5 Railroad of the Day: Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. External Inbox blufordshops@aol.com Attachments Sun, Jul 2, 2:58 PM (18 hours ago) to Railroad of the Day: Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. The BR&P, chartered in 1887, combined the Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad (which had acquired the New York assets of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad in 1885) and the Pittsburgh & State Line Railroad (which had acquired the Pennsylvania assets of the Rochester & Pittsburgh Railroad, also in 1885). The Y-shaped 520 mile system had lines running from Buffalo and Rochester, New York southeast and southwest, respectively, to Ashford where they met. The line continued south into Pennsylvania as far as Falls Creek and Walston, where connections forwarded traffic to Pittsburgh. In 1898-99 a BR&P construction subsidiary, the Allegheny & Western, extended the BR&P from Punxsutawney to Butler PA, where it connected to the B&O Railroad's Pittsburgh Division. Nearly half of the 285 route miles between Rochester NY and Butler PA were double tracked between 1901-1903. Traffic was primarily coal, moving north. Ferry service was offered between Charlotte, New York, on Lake Ontario, and Cobourg, Ontario and a connection, there, with Grand Trunk Railway. BR&P relied heavily on Mallets, rostering an impressive fleet of 55 2-6-6-2’s as well as nine 2-8-8-2 pushers. Baltimore & Ohio bought control of the company in 1929 and took over operations in 1932

Successor/Parent History: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (reporting marks B&O, BO) is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal (which served New York City) and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with an original line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia (now West Virginia) over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. From there it passed through Virginia from Harpers Ferry to a point just west of the junction of Patterson Creek and the North Branch Potomac River where it crossed back into Maryland to reach Cumberland. From there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia.

It is now part of the CSX Transportation (CSX) network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA. The B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U.S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto: "Linking 13 Great States with the Nation." Part of the B&O Railroad's immortality has come from being one of the four featured railroads on the U.S. version of the board game Monopoly, but it is the only railroad on the board which did not serve Atlantic City, New Jersey, directly.

When CSX established the B&O Railroad Museum as a separate entity from the corporation, some of the former B&O Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore, including the Mt. Clare roundhouse, were donated to the museum while the rest of the property was sold. The B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles' current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) or the Reading and its subsidiaries.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.