ATHEARN
#1855 HO-scale STANDARD COACH #1714 BALTIMORE & OHIO B&O RTR
READY-TO-RUN STAINLESS STEEL
Recalling the past glamor of the
1890's Royal Blue Line, the B&O introduced its Colonial - series dining
cars such as the Martha Washington, which were particularly noted for their
fresh Chesapeake Bay cuisine, served on Dresden china in ornate cars with glass
chandeliers and colonial-style furnishings. The B&O's manager of dining car
services said his department's objective was "...to be hospitable to our
patrons in all respects – to make them feel the comfort, convenience and
homelike atmosphere of our accommodations as soon as they step on our
trains."Dining car specialties included oysters and Chesapeake Bay fish
served with cornmeal muffins. B&O president Daniel Willard personally
sampled his dining cars' cuisine while traveling about the line, and recognized
particularly pleasing meals with letters of appreciation and autographed
pictures given to the dining car chefs
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The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
(reporting mark BO) was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest
railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830.
Merchants from Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the
construction of the National Road early in the century, wanted to do business
with settlers crossing the Appalachian Mountains. The railroad faced
competition from several existing and proposed enterprises, including the
Albany-Schenectady Turnpike, built in 1797, the Erie Canal, which opened in
1825, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. At first, the B&O was located
entirely in the state of Maryland; its original line extending from the port of
Baltimore west to Sandy Hook, Maryland, opened in 1834. There it connected with
Harper's Ferry, first by boat, then by the Wager Bridge, across the Potomac
River into Virginia, and also with the navigable Shenandoah River.
Because of competition with the
C&O Canal for trade with coal fields in western Maryland, the railroad
could not use the C&O right-of-way west of Harpers Ferry. To continue
westward through the Appalachian Mountains, the B&O built the B & O
Railroad Potomac River Crossing (1837) at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863,
West Virginia). The line continued through Virginia 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 (1842), connecting with the
National Road, the main route westward. It reached the Ohio River at
Moundsville, Virginia (1852), Wheeling (1853), where it built a terminus, and
in 1857 to Parkersburg, Virginia, below rapids which made navigation difficult
during parts of the year. It proved crucial to Union success during the
American Civil War, which caused considerable damage to the system. After the
war, the B&O consolidated several feeder lines in Virginia and West
Virginia, and expanded westward into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. B&O
advertising later carried the motto: "Linking 13 Great States with the
Nation."
The B&O also included the Leiper
Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U.S. At the end of
1970, the B&O operated 5,552 miles of road and 10,449 miles of track, not
including the Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) or the Reading and its
subsidiaries. It included the oldest operational railroad bridge in the United
States, the Carrollton Viaduct. After a series of mergers in the 20th century,
the B&O became part of the CSX Transportation (CSX) network in 1987.
When CSX established the B&O
Railroad Museum as a separate entity from the corporation, it donated some of
the former B&O Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore, including the Mt. Clare
roundhouse, to the museum, while selling the rest of the property. 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.
The B&O owes its fame, in part,
to its inclusion as one of the four featured railroads in the original version
of the popular board game Monopoly; it is the only railroad on the board that
did not directly serve Atlantic City, New Jersey, the city whose street names
were used in the game's original edition.
The Royal Blue was the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad (B&O)'s flagship passenger train between New York City and
Washington, D.C., in the United States, beginning in 1890. The Baltimore-based
B&O also used the name between 1890 and 1917 for its improved passenger service
between New York and Washington, collectively dubbed the Royal Blue Line. Using
variants such as the Royal Limited and Royal Special for individual Royal Blue
trains, the B&O operated the service in partnership with the Reading
Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Principal intermediate cities
served were Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. Later, as Europe reeled
from the carnage of World War I and connotations of European royalty fell into
disfavor, the B&O discreetly omitted the sobriquet Royal Blue Line from its
New York passenger service and the Royal Blue disappeared from B&O
timetables. Beginning in 1917, former Royal Blue Line trains were renamed: the
Royal Limited (inaugurated on May 15, 1898), for example, became the National
Limited, continuing west from Washington to St. Louis via Cincinnati. During
the Depression, the B&O hearkened back to the halcyon pre-World War I era
when it launched a re-christened Royal Blue train between New York and
Washington in 1935. The B&O finally discontinued all passenger service
north of Baltimore on April 26, 1958, including the Royal Blue.
Railroad historian Herbert Harwood
said, in his seminal history of the service, "First conceived in late
Victorian times to promote a new railroad line ... it was indeed one of the
most memorable images in the transportation business, an inspired blend of
majesty and mystique ... Royal Blue Line ... Royal Blue Trains ... the Royal
Blue all meant different things at different times. But essentially they all
symbolized one thing: the B&O's regal route."[1][2] Between the 1890s
and World War I, the B&O's six daily Royal Blue trains providing service
between New York and Washington were noted for their luxury, elegant
appearance, and speed. The car interiors were paneled in mahogany, had fully
enclosed vestibules (instead of open platforms, still widely in use at the time
on U.S. railroads), then-modern heating and lighting, and leaded glass windows.
The car exteriors were painted a deep "Royal Saxony blue" color with
gold leaf trim, a color personally chosen by the B&O's tenth president,
Charles F. Mayer.
The B&O's use of electrification
instead of steam power in a Baltimore tunnel on the Royal Blue Line, beginning
in 1895, marked the first use of electric locomotives by an American railroad
and presaged the dawn of practical alternatives to steam power in the 20th
century. Spurred by intense competition from the formidable Pennsylvania
Railroad, the dominant railroad in the lucrative New York–Washington market
since the 1880s, the Royal Blue in its mid-1930s reincarnation was noted for a
number of technological innovations, including streamlining and the first
non-articulated diesel locomotive on a passenger train in the U.S., a harbinger
of the steam locomotive's eventual demise.
