B&O Railroad: "One Hundred Years of Railroad Development" 1926 Eastman Kodak Company (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

Made at the Pageant of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad "The Fair of the Iron Horse".

Originally a public domain film from the PrelingerArchives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://collections.digitalmaryland.org/digital/collection/mdfi

...The Fair of the Iron Horse took place in Halethorpe, Maryland from September 24 to October 8, 1927. The event was held to commemorate the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s first one hundred years of service to the public. The massive undertaking was spread over 25 acres along the Old Main Line and was attended by more than 1.25 million people. In addition to stationary exhibitions, it featured a moving pageant each afternoon that dramatized the progress of inland transport during the previous 100 years. Featured in the pageant were Native American Indians, horseback riders, stagecoaches, Conestoga wagons, and the evolution of locomotives including entries from Canada and Great Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_and_Ohio_Railroad

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (reporting marks B&O, BO) was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. Merchants from the city of Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the construction of the National Road early in the century, wanted to continue to compete for trade with trans-Appalachian settlers with the newly constructed Erie Canal (which served New York City), another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania (which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh), the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (which connected to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C.), and the James River Canal, which directed traffic toward Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia. 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 (opened in 1834). There it connected with Harper's Ferry (the boat) across the Potomac 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. Thus, to continue westward through the Appalachian Mountains, the B&O chose to build a bridge across the Potomac (1839) 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 west. From there the B&O extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling (1853) and a few years later (1857) also to Parkersburg, West Virginia (below rapids which made navigation difficult during parts of the year). It proved crucial to Union success during the American Civil War, although the conflict also caused considerable damage (and repair costs). After the war's end, the B&O consolidated several feeder lines in Virginia and West Virginia, as well as expanded westward into Ohio (including a junction at Portsmouth), Indiana, and Illinois. B&O advertising later carried the motto: "Linking 13 Great States with the Nation."

After several mergers, the B&O became part of the CSX Transportation (CSX) network. The B&O also includes 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 includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the United States.

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.

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; it is the only railroad on the board that did not directly serve Atlantic City, New Jersey...