Above the Belt

4 Days Left to Register

2010-09-17T07:44:00.001-07:00

Only 4 days remain before registrations are due to Andy White.

Get the registration form using the link above or go to:

http://www.borhs.org/Events/events.html

See you then!

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

2010-06-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

(A MARC Train goes west towards Washington from the Dorsey, MD MARC Station)

The Registration form for the 2010 B&ORHS-CSHS-R&LHS Convention is now available.

http://borhs.org/Events/2010AnnualBaltimore.pdf

Convention Schedule

2010-06-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

B&ORRHS-CSHS-R&LHS Joint Convention Schedule October 21 to 24, 2010
Convention Hotel: The Holiday Inn BWI Airport, 890 Elkridge Landing Rd., Linthicum MD 21090, phone 410-694-6024, is the convention headquarters hotel and will be the location of the registration, presentations and the Company Store. The Society hotel room rate is $95.00 per night plus room taxes. Please state that the reservation is for the B&ORRHS block of rooms when you make your room reservation. Please book your room reservation by no later than September 21, 2010. After that date, room reservations for our group will be taken on a space-available basis only.

Thursday, October 21, 2010:
- 12 Noon – 3:00 PM: Board of Directors meeting (at the hotel)
- 12 Noon: Company Store set-up at the hotel
- 3:00 PM: Convention registration and Company Store sales at the hotel
- 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM: Convention registration, contest registration and Company Store sales at the hotel.

- 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM: Evening presentations at the hotel:
- Travers Stavac and others: Retired Administrators of the B&O Railroad (RABO) Panel
- Dave Shackelford: Early Railroad Transportation in Baltimore
- John Teichmoeller: B&O’s Baltimore Harbor Rail-Marine Operations
- Dave Manning: Modeling the Chessie System H-29 (B&O Class W-13) Hopper Cars

Friday, October 22, 2010:
- 7:45 AM: Board buses
- 8:00 AM: Buses leave hotel for a tour along the old Royal Blue line between Baltimore and Wilmington DE, including the Wilmington & Western Railroad to/from, Hockessin DE, B&O Wilmington Station, and Aberdeen Station.
- 12 Noon – 1:00 PM (approx): Box lunch on the Wilmington & Western Railroad
- 3:30 PM: Buses return to hotel
- 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM: Convention registration, contest registration and Company Store sales at the hotel

- 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM: Evening presentations at the hotel:
- Fred Lass: Building & Detailing B&O Steam Locomotives
- Mike Shylanski: Late B&O and Chessie Era Box Cars
- Roger Hammond: Operations at Carroll Yard aka "Trailer Ramp" in the Chessie Era
- David Pfieffer: A History of the B&O's Camden Station and Warehouse Complex
- Travers Stavac: Power Movements at Riverside-October 1953

Saturday, October 23, 2010:
- 7:45 AM: Board buses
- 8:00 AM: Buses leave hotel for a tour along the old Royal Blue line in the Baltimore vicinity, including Mt. Royal Station, Sports Legends Museum, Baltimore Museum of Industry, and the B&O Railroad Museum. Tours of Mt. Royal Station and the Sports Legends Museum may be done via alternating groups to help mitigate crowd size. There will be an optional Restoration Shop tour available at the B&O Museum for the first 25 attendees who sign up at the convention registration desk ($22 each).
- 12:15 Noon – 1:15 PM (approx): Box lunch
- 3:30 PM: Buses return to hotel
- 4:00 – 5:00 PM: Final Company Store sales at the hotel (please pick up your model and photo display entries before closing)
- 5:00 – 6:00 PM: Reception and cash bar at the hotel
- 6:00 – 9:30 PM: Banquet at the hotel. Guest Speaker is Mr. Bill Schafer, Norfolk Southern Corp., My Start in Railroading at Mt. Clare Shops in Baltimore (dinner must be purchased if you want to hear the speaker.)

Sunday, October 24, 2010:
- 8:00 – 9:00 AM: Breakfast at the hotel
- 9:00 – 10:00 AM: Annual Business Meeting at the hotel
- 10:00 AM – approx 4:00 PM: Personal transportation from the hotel on one of two tours:

o Tour A: Old Main Line West, including St. Denis, Thomas Viaduct, Sykesville, Mt. Airy, and points west

o Tour B: Model Layouts & Railfanning, including St. Denis, Nick Powell’s Layout, Free State System’s Layout.

Have a safe trip home!

Almost there...

2010-06-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

It is with great relief that the registration form has now been completed and is being reviewed before going to the printer. Once it has been finalized, it will be sent to our partners for this event and posted on this website and other websites for those who may be interested in attending.

Wilmington, DE Tanneries

2010-06-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

http://apps.dnrec.state.de.us/Tanneries/contents.aspx (You must use IE to open this page. It is not written to work in Firefox.)

Wilmington, DE was once the second largest producer of tanned hides on the Eastern Seaboard. It's location between the major markets of the industrial northeast and the supply sources of the south and access to the chemical industries of Delaware and New Jersey made it an ideal location for this type of industry. Unfortunately, this industry came at a high cost to the environment. Arsenic and other heavy metals were instrumental in the tanning process and their waste products have created some environmental issues for the city.

However, this has also necessitated a high quality survey of the tanneries of Wilmington, DE that was completed in 2002. This in turn allowed for an excellent website to be created about this industry in Wilmington and it's well worth investigating.

Details are nailed down!

2010-06-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

The last logistical details have been nailed down for the Convention. The flier is now in the process of being created. Soon it will be distributed to our partner organizations and the mailings will be going out in July.

Please note that this event is open to members of the B&O Railroad Historical Society, Railway and Locomotive Historical Society, Chessie System Historical Society and Retired Administrators of the B&O Railroad. If you do want to attend, you'll need to be a member, spouse or guest of a member of one of these organizations. Now is the time to join if you want to make sure you will get the mailing.

Frank Furness and the B&O

2010-05-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

Frank Furness was a noted American Architect whose buildings were mainly found in the greater Philadelphia, PA region. (Much like E. Francis Baldwin's are found around the Baltmore, MD region.) Mr. Furness served in the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry during the Civil War and earned the Congressional Medal of Honor during his service. After his discharge helped design several structures for the B&O's Philadelphia Extension.

Two of these structures survive today. The station at Aberdeen, MD and the station in Wilmington, DE. During the convention's Friday tour we will be stopping by both locations.

For more information on Mr. Furness, please check out the website of the Friends of the Furness Railroad District: http://www.friendsoffurness.org/

You can also check out his Wikipedia entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Furness

The Landenberg Branch

2010-03-11T19:48:00.000-08:00

(Right: The Landenberg Branch ca 1959.)

The Landenberg Branch was part of the original Delaware and Western Railroad, acquired by the B&O to enable it to build through the state of Delaware. The main line of the Philadelphia Subdivision is still in use by CSX Corporation and the Landenberg Branch is now used by the Wilmington and Western Railroad.

The track chart shows the branch from Landenberg Junction to Mill Creek, DE. The rest of the line up to Landenberg, PA was already abandoned by the time this chart was made. (You can learn more about that line here.)

We'll be riding the Wilmington and Western on Friday October 22, 2010 as part of our bus tour of the line between Baltimore, MD and Wilmington, DE.

Aberdeen, MD B&O Station News

2010-03-09T07:22:00.000-08:00

The Baltimore Sun reported an update on the work being done to preserve the B&O Station in Aberdeen, MD. As this will be one of our tour stops on Friday it's worthy of checking out:

The Baltimore Sun Article by Fred Rasmussen

Also, if you're wondering what the station looks like, this video is on YouTube:

Pre-Convention Reading List...

2009-11-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if everyone is as into prepping the convention as I am, but here's a selected reading list for those who may be interested in getting some background information on the area's we'll be visiting:

Royal Blue Line by Herb Harwood. JHU Press.

If you're going to bring one book with you to this convention or read one book beforehand, this is it. Herb Harwood is known to the B&O History community as the author of "Impossible Challenge" this was his second full length book on the B&O. It covers the near Quixotic plan to expand the B&O Railroad to connect with the largest and most profitable market in the 19th Century; New York, NY. Very well researched and written. It's worth buying if you have any interest in railroad history.

History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by John F. Stover. Purdue University Press.

Stover has given us a fine reference book for the history of the B&O Railroad and it's very handy to have around. However, it is very business (read: economics) focused. It's usually best used to start your research and then flesh out the details with other source material.

The Area of Interest:

2009-08-17T19:46:00.001-07:00

The 2010 Convention will be based out of Baltimore, MD. Our focus will be the Philadelphia Subdivision as far north as Wilmington, DE. This line was built in the late 19th Century to carry the B&O Railroad into Philadelphia, PA.

Originally, the B&O had planned to reach Philadelphia by way of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore (PW&B) Railroad. However, this line was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to keep the B&O out of the Philadelphia market. The PW&B is now today's Amtrak Northeast Corridor line. Freight traffic still flows over the line into Baltimore, but mainly at night after Amtrak trains have cleared the tracks.

You may note the branch running north out of Wilmington. This is the B&O's Landenberg Branch. The lower portion of which is still used by the Wilmington & Western Railway. We plan to visit this historic railroad during the convention.

Welcome!

2009-08-10T21:25:00.001-07:00

This is the first post for the B&O Railroad Historical Society's 2010 Convention Blog. We've called this blog "Above The Belt" because the focus of the convention will be the Philadelphia Sub from Baltimore, MD to Wilmington, DE. We will be using this blog to provide updates and information about the upcoming convention and hopefully some interesting articles and images to supplement our presentations and tours.

Watch this Space!