Jeffrey Smith
In the late 1800s, the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad was faced with a difficult problem. Until 1885,
the B&O leased track through Baltimore to connect its
eastern and western routes. In 1884, B&O rival The Pennsylvania
Railroad, purchased the track the B&O had been leasing
leaving the B&O with no way to get trains through Baltimore.
The city of Baltimore was unwilling to allow a new railroad
line to be built through the middle of the city and the
B&O could not have afforded the land acquisitions required
to build such a line. To further complicate matters, hills
on the Western side of Baltimore were too steep to build
track around. This forced the B&O to construct the Belt
Line, a 7.3 mile route along the eastern side of Baltimore.
The project included the construction of the 1.4 mile Howard
Street Tunnel, six short tunnels in Northern Baltimore;
a viaduct, several other overpasses, and countless cut-and-fill
operations at various locations.
Building the
tunnel
Construction of the Howard Street Tunnel began in 1891,
was completed in 1895, and posed many engineering difficulties
for the B&O. Howard Street was a main north-south route
and was densely populated along the entire 1.4-mile route.
Lining the road above were residences, retail stores, academic
institutions, and other commercial establishments. Around
this time, Howard Street was home to a horse car line and
carried substantial wagon and carriage traffic. If that
wasn't enough, the city was in the process of constructing
a cable-powered street railway. The conditions under ground
were not much better. The earth was mostly clay and sand
and was littered with quicksand produced from several underground
streams running through the area. Engineers would manage
to overcome all of these obstacles and build the longest
soft-earth tunnel in the nation, without disturbing anything
on the surface. The Howard Street Tunnel would end up being
the longest tunnel on the entire B&O system.
To accomplish
the construction of the Howard Street Tunnel and the remainder
of the Belt Line, the B&O hired Pennsylvania Railroad
assistant to the vice president, Samuel Rea, as the Belt
Line's Chief Engineer. Although Rae resigned in late 1891,
long before the project was complete, the tunnel was opened
on May 1 1895. It was constructed, using over 30 million
bricks, took 56 months to build, had a grade of 35 degrees,
and a length of 1.7 miles. Originally it was constructed
for two track operations, one in each direction, however;
the tunnel was later reduced to a single track due the increased
size of railcars. Tunnel depth varied from three feet at
the south end to 49 feet at the north end.
The tunnel exits
trains in a northeasterly direction toward Wilmington, Del.
From this end, B&O trains would run into Philadelphia
via Central Railroad of New Jersey and Reading trackage.
The Mount Royal Station opened in 1896 at the north end
of the tunnel, and served B&O mainline passengers until
April 30, 1958. Local service continued to Mount Royal until
1961, when it was permanently closed. Currently the train
station houses an art gallery.
Running in
the tunnel
Due to its length and grade, the Howard Street Tunnel was
an operational nightmare. Smoke and toxic gases from the
steam locomotives would have made going through the tunnel
a miserable experience, at best, for locomotive crews and
passengers. Prior to the tunnel's construction, B&O
engineers realized they had to find an alternate to steam
power for use in the Howard Street Tunnel. The Pennsylvania,
faced with the same problem 20 years earlier, was forced
to construct huge ventilation chimneys above the tunnel,
carrying the toxic gases into the open air above the streets
of Baltimore. Fortunately for the B&O, these chimneys
would prove to be unnecessary. When construction of the
tunnel began the motive power for trains through the tunnel
was undecided but several recent events were pointing the
B&O to the use of an emerging technology. In 1885, an
electrified horse car line was in successful operation in
Baltimore and an electrified streetcar system was in operation
in Richmond, Virginia.
The picture below shows The last northbound
Royal Blue disappears into the mist at the Camden Station
in Baltimore in April 1958. The Camden Station is just south
of the Howard St. Tunnel. Photo from the Collection of the
NRHS.
Electrics
slow to the rescue
The problem facing the B&O was that present-day electric
railroad technology was still not able to haul the heavy
loads that would routinely run through the Howard Street
Tunnel. By the early 1890s, electric locomotives designed
for heavy rail service were thought to be a possibility,
but none had yet to be produced. In 1892, in a purely speculative
vain, the B&O signed a contract with General Electric
to build a locomotive capable of performing in the Howard
Street Tunnel.
The plan was to
operate westbound trains (those trains that were descending
the grade) by allowing the steamers to "coast"
downhill. Since they were not working up a heavy grade,
the heavy, toxic smoke would not be produced. For trains
in the eastbound direction (those trains that were ascending
the grade), an electric locomotive would be attached and
would pull the train through the tunnel while the steam
engine just idled through the tunnel.
By 1893, GE had
produced a four-wheel, 30-ton switcher. Considering that
a year earlier they hadn't produced a single electric locomotive
for heavy railroad service, this is considered a remarkable
achievement. Despite not being large enough to operate trains
through the Howard Street Tunnel, the unit was operational,
and GE committed to building a complete system for the B&O:
power generating plant, locomotive capable of moving specified
loads up the grade at specified speeds, and the necessary
electrical distribution systems.
Help finally
arrives
The first electric locomotive was delivered to the B&O
in June of 1895 from GE's Schenectady, New York plant. Numbered
1 on the B&O roster, it was the first electric locomotive
to run on an American steam railroad and entered service
on June 7, 1895. It was quickly put to work on freight runs,
while passenger trains through the tunnel continued to be
steam powered, while the unit was being tested. The second
unit arrived in November 1895, and the third arrived in
May of 1896. The electric units weighted a total of 98 tons
each and had four pairs of 62-inch drivers contained in
a two-section articulated frame. The four electric motors
provided 360 hp each and produced 49,000 pounds of tractive
effort. The units were able to pull 500-ton passenger trains
upgrade at 35mph and 1,500-ton freight trains upgrade at
15mph.
Passengers
"in the way"?
As the B&O worked to solve its complicated engineering
problems, it began working on plans for additional passenger
stations along the Belt Line route. Initially these plans
called for three new stations along the route. One was to
be constructed inside the Howard Street Tunnel itself, a
second was to be constructed just north of the Tunnel, and
the last was to be constructed in Peabody heights, a suburb
of Baltimore. In the end only one station, Mount Royal,
just north of the tunnel was constructed. The other two
stations were scrapped partly due to the anticipated difficulty
of running significant passenger traffic through the tunnel
and also due to the financial problems that were mounting
for the B&O. B&O management feared that the increased
passenger traffic would create a bottleneck for the movement
of large freight trains through Baltimore, which is exactly
the problem the tunnel was supposed to solve.
| Below: B&O Called
its Budd RDCs "Speedliners." Here, Speedliner
Trian No. 166 from Washinhgton has arrived att the cavernous
Mt. Royal station in December 1959, after passing through
Howard Street Tunnel. the north (east) portal may be
seen in the background. Photo by Frank G. Tatnall |
|
|
Building the
beast
The construction of the Howard Street Tunnel was a long
and difficult job. For the most part, construction proceeded
with only minor problems. Frequently, daytime work on the
Tunnel would cause the street pavement above to sink several
feet requiring a quick rebuild during the night. The only
significant incident was the destruction of a City College
building, dating from 1874 that became structurally unstable
due to an underground pool of water that contractors inadvertently
opened. When the tunnel's construction was finally completed,
a new building was built to replace the demolished one.
Electrification
ends
The electrification of the tunnel remained until the 1940s,
when diesel locomotives made it unnecessary. Currently,
the tunnel is owned and operated by CSX. CSX views the Howard
Street Tunnel as essential to its operation but a traffic
bottleneck. Recently, CSX has taken steps to improve the
situation. They dried out the bores of the tunnel and increased
the speed limit from 10 mph to 25 mph. Although the tunnel
has been improved greatly in recent years, it's in need
of substantial work to ensure its safe operation in the
future. In the meantime, the Howard Street Tunnel remains
an essential route for moving freight through the city of
Baltimore.
Sources:
1) Harwood, Herbert, H. Royal Blue Line. Sykesville: Greenberg
Publications, 1990
2) Manion, Paul. "The Howard Street Tunnel." The
Sentinel. July/August 1990: 6-21.
3) Article from Those Classic Trains published on the web
at http://www.northeast.railfan.net/classic/BnOdata6.htm
