The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (PW&B) was an American railroad that operated independently from 1836 to 1881. It was formed in 1836 by the merger of four state-chartered railroads in three

Middle Atlantic states Middle or The Middle may refer to: * Centre (geometry), the point equally distant from the outer limits. Places * Middle (sheading), a subdivision of the Isle of Man * Middle Bay (disambiguation) * Middle Brook (disambiguation) * Middle Creek ( ...

to create a single line between

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

and

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. In 1881, the PW&B was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), which was at the time the nation's largest railroad. In 1902, the PRR merged it into its Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad. The right-of-way laid down by the PW&B line is still in use today as part of

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

's Northeast Corridor and the Maryland Department of Transportation's MARC commuter passenger system from Baltimore to Maryland's northeast corner. Freight is hauled on the route; formerly by the Conrail system and currently by

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

History

Origins

On April 2, 1831, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, seeking to improve transportation between Philadelphia and points south along the Atlantic coast and Eastern seaboard, chartered the Philadelphia and Delaware County Rail-Road Company. The legislature allotted $200,000 to build a rail line from America's largest city to the Delaware state line. In July 1835, surveyors began to look at possible routes, and in October, they reported that the best option, a 17-mile line, would cost $233,000 to build. Meanwhile, further south, across the

Mason–Dixon line The Mason–Dixon line, also called the Mason and Dixon line or Mason's and Dixon's line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (part of Virginia ...

, the

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

and Maryland legislatures were doing their part to create a rail link to Wilmington and

. On January 18, 1832, the State of Delaware chartered the Wilmington and Susquehanna Rail Road Company (W&S, $400,000) to build from Wilmington to the Maryland state line. On March 5, the State of Maryland chartered the Baltimore and Port Deposite Rail Road Company (B&PD) (with $1,000,000) to build from Baltimore northeast to the western bank of the Susquehanna River. On March 12, the Delaware and Maryland Rail Road Company (D&M) was chartered for $3,000,000 to build from

Port Deposit Port Deposit is a town in Cecil County, Maryland, United States. It is located on the east bank of the Susquehanna River near its discharge into the Chesapeake Bay. The population was 653 at the 2010 census. Geography Port Deposit is located a ...

or any other point on the Susquehanna's eastern river bank north to the

line. In 1835, the W&S hired architect/surveyor William Strickland to make a preliminary survey to the southwest between Wilmington and North East, Maryland. That same year, the B&PD began operating trains between Baltimore harbor's "Basin" (today's

Inner Harbor The Inner Harbor is a historic seaport, tourist attraction, and landmark of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It was described by the Urban Land Institute in 2009 as "the model for post-industrial waterfront redevelopment around the world". Th ...

) waterfront and its Canton industrial, commercial and residential neighborhood to the southeast. But Matthew Newkirk, who had invested $50,000 in the B&PD including funds borrowed from the United States Bank, grew impatient. On Oct. 6, he wrote to the Company Board "demanding that Pres. Finley resign and be replaced by someone who will be more aggressive in collecting from delinquent subscribers and pushing project forward." As alternates, he suggests the noted lawyer, artist and civic activist, John H. B. Latrobe, brother of Chief Engineer Benjamin H. Latrobe, II (grandson of famous architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe), or

Roswell L. Colt Roswell Lyman Colt (1779-1856) was an American businessman who made a fortune in the shipping industry, served for decades as governor of the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, and was an early railroad executive. Colt's parents were Pe ...

. Six days later, Colt became railroad line president, but his term lasted just five weeks; he was soon replaced by Lewis Brantz.

Operations

The year 1836 saw several milestones. The P&DC opened its first segment of track; saw its allowable expenditures upped by the State to $400,000; and changed its name, on March 14, to The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company. On July 4, the PW&B began building its bridge over the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It f ...

, the most significant obstacle on its part of the route. The bridge would cross at Gray's Ferry Bridge, south of the city. Meanwhile, on April 18, the D&M merged with the W&S, forming the Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad Company. Work proceeded in Delaware and Maryland as well. By July 1837, there was continuous track from Baltimore to Wilmington, broken only by the wide Susquehanna River, which trains crossed by steam-powered ferryboats at Havre de Grace to Perryville. That year, the railroad ordered seven

4-2-0 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, two powered driving wheels on one axle and no trailing wheels. This type of locomotive is often called a ...

steam locomotives from

Norris Locomotive Works The Norris Locomotive Works was a steam locomotive manufacturing company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that produced nearly one thousand railroad engines between 1832 and 1866. It was the dominant American locomotive producer during most of ...

; it ordered two more in or about 1840. On January 15, 1838, the PW&B opened service from Wilmington to Gray's Ferry, then a few miles south of Philadelphia's city limits. Passengers debarking at Gray's Ferry were taken by omnibus into the city. The disadvantages of tripartite ownership of the Philadelphia-Baltimore line having become obvious, the three remaining state-chartered railroads merged on February 12, 1838, to form the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company. (The new company's name differed from its predecessor's in that "The" at the beginning of the titled name was not part of its formal incorporated name.) Among the passengers that year was

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...

, a slave who escaped his Baltimore owner by boarding a PB&W train, perhaps at Canton or somewhere east of where the President Street Station would be built in 1849, and riding it northeast to Philadelphia. To avoid detention, Douglass, a future world-famous abolitionist, statesman, Federal official, orator and publisher, borrowed a "seaman's protection", a document obtained by his future wife, a free black woman, which was normally carried by free black sailors, of which there were many in the merchant fleets and the navy. Later, the railroad would require black passengers to have "a responsible white person" sign a bond at the ticket office before allowing them to board. In December, the PB&W completed its Schuylkill bridge at Gray's Ferry. Named the " Newkirk Viaduct" after PW&B president Matthew Newkirk, it allowed trains to run from downtown Philadelphia to downtown Baltimore, with only the Susquehanna River steam railroad ferry interrupting the ride. (The railroad marked this achievement by erecting the Newkirk Viaduct Monument, a 15-foot marble obelisk designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, a future

Architect of the Capitol The Architect of the Capitol (AOC) is the federal agency responsible for the maintenance, operation, development, and preservation of the United States Capitol Complex. It is an agency of the legislative branch of the federal government and is ...

.) That interruption was eventually bridged under pressure of the heavy traffic needs in 1864–5, the later days of the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. After a disastrous storm damaged the new spans, reconstruction began anew and was completed by 1866. The

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 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 ...

(B&O) began using the tracks that same year to offer service northeast of Baltimore to Philadelphia.

Expansion

In Baltimore, the PW&B's terminus and business office sat at the southwest corner of President and Fleet Streets, east of the

Jones Falls The Jones Falls is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 stream in Maryland. It is impounded to create Lake Roland before running through the city of Baltim ...

, the eventual future site of the President Street Station. The line ran east along Fleet Street, turned southeast onto Boston Street and ran along the waterfront past Canton before turning northeast and leaving the city limits, heading east, then northeast towards the Susquehanna. In Philadelphia, the line ended at Broad Street and Prime Avenue (today Washington Avenue), where it connected with the Southwark Rail-Road (built in 1835) to reach the Delaware River. In 1839, the railroad's ticket agents advertised daily mail-and-passenger trains that left Baltimore's old original Pratt Street station (at South Charles Street) of the B&O (before 1857-65 construction of the now-famous Camden Street Station) at 9:30 a.m., stopped for lunch in Wilmington, and reached the Market Street depot in Philadelphia at 4 p.m. In 1842, Newkirk resigned as PW&B president. He was replaced by Matthew Brooke Buckley (1794-1856), who had become a PW&B board member on Jan. 10, 1842, and one week later had taken over leadership of one of the railroad's three executive committees, the Northern one. As president, Buckley helped create the first telegraph line, (the previous invention of

Samuel F. B. Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...

laid over the B&O line to Washington in 1844), from Philadelphia to Baltimore (and hence from points north and south) by agreeing to allow the builder to use the PW&B right-of-way in exchange for the use of the communications equipment. On Jan. 12, 1846, Buckley was replaced by Edward C. Dale, a grandson of Richard Dale, one of the U.S. Navy's first commodores. Between 1846 and 1849, the railroad ordered five more locomotives, likely 4-4-0s, from the Norris Works. President Street Station - Baltimore 1856

President Street Station - Baltimore 1856

In February 1850, the PW&B improved its Baltimore terminus by completing erection of a new station, with a 208-foot (63 m) barrel-vaulted train shed. Service onward to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, was facilitated by drawing the coaches by horse down

Pratt Street Pratt Street is a major street in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It forms a one-way pair of streets with Lombard Street that run west–east through downtown Baltimore. For most of their route, Pratt Street is one-way in an eastbound di ...

to the B&O terminal, first at East Pratt and South Charles Streets, later after 1857, to the new Camden Street Station. (In 1861, one week after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

began with the Confederate firings on

Fort Sumter Fort Sumter is a sea fort built on an artificial island protecting Charleston, South Carolina from naval invasion. Its origin dates to the War of 1812 when the British invaded Washington by sea. It was still incomplete in 1861 when the Battle ...

, in

Charleston harbor The Charleston Harbor is an inlet (8 sq mi/20.7 km²) of the Atlantic Ocean at Charleston, South Carolina. The inlet is formed by the junction of Ashley and Cooper rivers at . Morris and Sullivan's Islands shelter the entrance. Charleston ...

, in

South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = ...

, an angry mob of Southern sympathizers attacked a trainload of future

Union Army During the American Civil War, the Union Army, also known as the Federal Army and the Northern Army, referring to the United States Army, was the land force that fought to preserve the Union of the collective states. It proved essential to th ...

soldiers of the 6th Massachusetts volunteer state militia, joined in Philadelphia by the "Washington Brigade" of Pennsylvania state militia, heading to Washington to protect the Capital and respond to President Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops and declaring a state of rebellion. Because locomotives were not allowed to transfer through the city possibly for fire safety reasons during their transfer: the "First Bloodshed" of this famous " Pratt Street Riot" set the nation irrevocably on the path to war.) Unwieldy as it was, the arrangement allowed the railroads to temporarily compete with the

Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad (P&CR) (1834) was one of the earliest commercial railroads in the United States, running from Philadelphia to Columbia, Pennsylvania, it was built by the Pennsylvania Canal Commission in lieu of a canal from Colu ...

(renamed Pennsylvania Railroad after 1857) on routes going west from Philadelphia. By 1853, the

Camden and Amboy Railroad The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North AmericanList of Earliest Am ...

and New Jersey Railroad were also part of this agreement, providing through service from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

to the West. From 1863 to 1865, the railroad ordered ten 4-4-0 locomotives from the Norris Works. The PB&W also extended its reach into Delaware – on March 15, 1839, it bought the New Castle and Frenchtown Turnpike and Rail Road running from

New Castle, Delaware New Castle is a city in New Castle County, Delaware, United States. The city is located six miles (10 km) south of Wilmington and is situated on the Delaware River. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 5,285. History New Castl ...

, to Frenchtown, Maryland – but it took 13 years to connect the line to the rest of the PW&B. The "New Castle and Wilmington Railroad" was chartered to do so, and opened in 1852. The line also provided a connection with the Delaware Railroad, which the PW&B took over and began to operate on January 1, 1857. In 1859, the NC&F was abandoned west of

Porter Porter may refer to: Companies * Porter Airlines, Canadian regional airline based in Toronto * Porter Chemical Company, a defunct U.S. toy manufacturer of chemistry sets * Porter Motor Company, defunct U.S. car manufacturer * H.K. Porter, Inc., ...

, the junction with the Delaware Railroad. By 1866, these moves and others allowed the PW&B to dominate the

Delmarva Peninsula The Delmarva Peninsula, or simply Delmarva, is a large peninsula and proposed state on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by the vast majority of the state of Delaware and parts of the Eastern Shore regions of Maryland and Virginia. ...

rail market. In November 1866, the Susquehanna River was bridged at last by the PW&B Bridge, a 3,269-foot (996 m) wooden

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

, finally creating a continuous rail connection between Philadelphia and Baltimore. To avoid swampy areas and serve more populated ones, the PW&B built the Darby Improvement, which diverged from its existing main line just south of the Grays Ferry Bridge, passed through Darby, and rejoined it at Eddystone, just upriver from Chester. The new inland track opened on November 18, 1872. The PW&B dispensed with the 9.9-mile old alignment less than a year later, leasing it on July 1, 1873, to the

Philadelphia and Reading Railway The Reading Company ( ) was a Philadelphia-headquartered railroad that provided passenger and commercial rail transport in eastern Pennsylvania and neighboring states that operated from 1924 until its 1976 acquisition by Conrail. Commonly called ...

for 999 years with the stipulation that it would be used solely for freight. (The Reading dubbed the line, along with some connecting track, its Philadelphia and Chester Branch;The Railway World, Volume 6 (1880)
/ref> southbound trains reached it via the Junction Railroad (jointly controlled by PW&B, Reading, and PRR) and continued on to the connecting Chester and Delaware River Railroad.) The PW&B, which had competed so fiercely with the Pennsylvania, began to see their interests align. In 1873, the PRR opened the Baltimore and Potomac Rail Road (founded 1853, organized 1858), from Baltimore to Washington. The PW&B agreed to allow the PRR to use its track between Philadelphia and Baltimore, helping the PRR offer a shorter and more direct trip to Washington. On May 15, 1877, the PW&B formally absorbed the New Castle and Frenchtown and New Castle and Wilmington railroads, forming a branch line from Wilmington to Rodney. On May 21, 1877, it then absorbed the Southwark railroad, extending its main line to the Delaware River waterfront.

Fight for control

In 1880, a conflict began between the PRR and the B&O, both of which operated over the PW&B. The B&O was working to reduce its reliance on PRR tracks; it had recently arranged to switch its Philadelphia-New York trains to the new Reading-controlled "Bound Brook Route," which had recently broken the PRR's monopoly on travel to New York via New Jersey. At the time, northbound B&O trains left the PW&B at Gray's Ferry Bridge in southwest Philadelphia and traveled over the Junction Railroad to Belmont, where they reached Reading rails and continued north. However, a mile of the Junction Railroad's track through Philadelphia was owned and used by the PRR, which showed great ingenuity in arranging delays to B&O trains. The irate John W. Garrett (1820–84), Civil War-era President of the Baltimore & Ohio, decided to counter-attack by quietly buying out the PW&B, which would have cut off the Pennsylvania Railroad from its Baltimore & Potomac subsidiary. However, his agent encountered unexpected difficulties in buying up a majority of the stock at the price specified. Meanwhile, Garrett's maneuver became known to the PRR, which quickly bought out a majority of the stock at a somewhat higher price, preemptively taking control of the PW&B. Garrett and the Baltimore and Ohio were forced later to construct an independent separate northeast line to Philadelphia, the Baltimore and Philadelphia Railroad, while paying the PRR substantial fees to continue service further north to

over their lines. The new line opened in 1886; the Reading also used it to avoid the Junction Railroad.

PRR subsidiaries

A number of branches were built, bought and sold from 1881 to 1891, as described below. In 1895, the main line was realigned and straightened at

Naaman's Creek Naamans Creek (spelled Naaman Creek on federal maps) is a tributary of the Delaware River in northeast New Castle County, Delaware and southeast Delaware County, Pennsylvania. The stream rises near the intersection of Foulk Road and Naamans Cre ...

in Delaware. The old line would become sidings for

Claymont Steel EVRAZ plc (russian: Евраз) is a UK-incorporated multinational steel manufacturing and mining company part-owned by Russian oligarchs. It has operations mainly in Russia as well as the USA, Canada, and Kazakhstan. As of 2015, the ultimate b ...

. The PRR's Baltimore and Potomac Rail Road was formally leased to the PW&B on November 1, 1891. The Elkton and Middletown Railroad, opened in 1895, was planned as a cutoff between the main line at

Elkton, Maryland Elkton is a town in and the county seat of Cecil County, Maryland, United States. The population was 15,443 at the 2010 census. It was formerly called Head of Elk because it sits at the head of navigation on the Elk River, which flows into the n ...

, and the Delaware Railroad at Middletown, Delaware. However, only a short piece of track, serving industries in Elkton, was ever constructed. It was consolidated into the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad on September 15, 1916. An 1895 historian of the PRR had this to say about the significance of the PW&B, which it had acquired and gained control of fourteen years before:

An important constituent of a great North and South line of transportation, it challenges ocean competition and carries on its rails not only statesmen and tourists but a valuable interchange of products between different lines of latitude. As a military highway, it is of the greatest strategic importance to the national, industrial, and commercial capitals – Washington, Philadelphia and New York. It presents some of the very best transportation facilities to the commerce of the cities after which it is named and could not be obliterated from the railroad map of the United States without materially disturbing its harmony.

Merger

The PW&B merged with the Baltimore and Potomac on November 1, 1902, to form the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad.

Branches

*Southwark * 60th Street/Chester: Built in 1918, it stretched from South 58th Street in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, to Hog Island, Pennsylvania. *South Chester *Edgemoor *Augustine Mill: Also called the Brandywine Branch, it was built in 1882 from Landlith north along the Brandywine Creek to reach the Augustine Mills of the Jessup & Moore Paper Company, and was later extended further north to serve the Kentmere and Rockford Mills of Joseph Bancroft & Sons. * Shellpot: Also called the Shellpot Cutoff, it was built in 1888 from Edgemoor (near the crossing of the

Shellpot Creek Shellpot Creek is a tributary of the Delaware River in northeast New Castle County, Delaware. The stream rises between Grubb Road and Shipley Road, south of Naaman's Road at in Brandywine Hundred and flows southeast for about six miles before di ...

) around the south side of Wilmington to a point on the main line between Wilmington and Newport. It served as a freight bypass, to avoid what was then street running on the main line through Wilmington. *Delaware Branch: Formed from the old New Castle & Frenchtown and New Castle & Wilmington trackage between Wilmington and Rodney, via New Castle. It was sold to the Delaware Railroad in 1891. *New Castle Cut-off: Built in 1888 from a point on the Shellpot Branch just across the

Christina River The Christina River is a tributary of the Delaware River, approximately 35 miles (56 km) long, in northern Delaware in the United States, also flowing through small areas of southeastern Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland. Near i ...

from Cherry Island, south to New Castle and a connection with the Delaware Branch. It was sold with the Delaware Branch to the Delaware Railroad in 1891. *Delaware City: Sold by the Newark and Delaware City Railroad to the PW&B in 1881. It ran south and east from the main line at Newark to Delaware City. *Port Deposit: Built in 1866 up the Susquehanna River from Perryville to the river town of

. In 1893, it was sold to the Columbia and Port Deposit Railway, also PRR-controlled, which connected with it at Port Deposit. * Baltimore Union

References

External links

Christopher Baer's PRR Chronology
hosted by The Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society
Railroad History DatabaseData visualization of 1857 passenger traffic from various PW&B stations1949 map of PB&W lines in 1881
* William Strickland'
1835 report on the feasibility of the Wilmington & Susquehanna routePhoto of late-1800s PW&B baggage tag

Annual reports

*First Annual Report of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Rail Road Company ...: 1838-184
GoogleHathitrust

Organization of the United Companies Under the Name of Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Rail Road Company with Articles of Union
* The Sixth Annual Report of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Company (1844)
35th through 48th Annual Report of the President and Directors of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Rail Road Company
(1872–85)
Fifty-Sixth Annual Report Of The Philadelphia Wilmington And Baltimore Railroad Company
(1893) {{DEFAULTSORT:Philadelphia Wilmington Baltimore Railroad Defunct Delaware railroads Defunct Maryland railroads Defunct Pennsylvania railroads Companies affiliated with the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad Predecessors of the Pennsylvania Railroad Standard gauge railways in the United States Railway companies established in 1836 Railway companies disestablished in 1916 Defunct Virginia railroads Defunct Washington, D.C., railroads 1836 establishments in the United States American companies established in 1836 American companies disestablished in 1916