BALTIMORE'S UNSEEN ARTERY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BALTIMORE BELT RAILROAD AND ITS HOWARD STREET TUNNEL

摘要

Few motorists driving along venerable Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland, are ever aware of any activity going on below the pavement, but lying directly below much of the street is a century-old railroad tunnel that still serves as a key link in the rail route along the eastern seaboard, and freight trains pass through it day and night. Far less visible than the former Pennsylvania Railroad's "Broad Way," now owned and operated by Amtrak, the Howard Street Tunnel is part of CSX Transportation Company's (CSXT) main line through the city. Thousands of passengers ride Amtrak and commuter trains into Union Station in Jones Falls Valley every day, and many assume this is the primary line for freight, too. In fact, very few freight trains traverse this Amtrak line today, leaving CSXTs largely unseen line to host almost all of the north-south freight traffic moving through Baltimore. This CSXT line was built as the Baltimore Belt Railroad by parent Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), a CSXT predecessor, to counter intense competition from its primary rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and its opening in 1895 introduced a new technology to American railroading: electrification. The "Belt Line" concept included a tunnel 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) long under busy Howard Street, and the first heavy electric locomotives solved the problem of how to get steam-powered trains through this tunnel without asphyxiating the passengers and crews or creating obnoxious smoke problems in the surrounding area. The Baltimore Belt Railroad and Howard Street Tunnel represented a major investment that the B&O's managers did not undertake lightly. The story of how this vital line came to be, the construction techniques employed, the innovations it spawned, and how operations through it have evolved over more than a century is a fascinating one, but one that is not well known outside the railroad community. Ironically, this may be due, at least in part, to how well the Belt Line and its tunnels have performed. The fruits of good engineering often labor behind the scenes and unremarked. Although a major accident in 2001 seriously disrupted me city for several days, and the specter of global terrorism has put all such structures under scrutiny as potential targets, the Belt Line and Howard Street Tunnel have, for the most part, continued to quietly do the job they were built to do 109 years ago— convey trains across town with a minimum of disruption to either citizens or trains.