The battle for New York to Washington passenger service: B&O VS Pennsy

It's not an arrogant naming convention, it marketing 101.

Really interesting video, thanks for posting it. I once met an older fella that told me he travelled in the 1950's from Washington DC to NYC on the Baltimore & Ohio, & that once the B&O 'Royal Blue' line trains arrived in Jersey City, that the connecting bus to Manhattan was quite efficient. I also remember reading that during the busy World War Two era, the Pennsylvania Railroad trains from Penn Station to Washington DC were jammed & totally overcrowded, passengers often sat on their luggage in hallways at the end of the cars. But, even though with a B&O ticket you had to use the ferry across the Hudson River, you'd usually find a seat on a B&O train to / from Jersey City in the WW2 era.

Until 1958 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had a bus terminal at Columbus Circle in Manhattan that went to the ferry terminal in Battery Park for a ferry ride to its terminal in Jersey City.

Penn Station was built when the city was going up. It was torn down cause the city was now going down. RIP NYC .

An excellent video full of really interesting information. As a PA resident, I grew up along the PRR tracks and have modeled my RR on the PRR.

As a kid, my family would take the B&O from Elizabeth NJ to DC. My mother came close to tears the first time we had to use the PRR from Newark. From a roomette to coach seats! Oh, the humanity! (Great video, btw.)

13:39 I'd also add that the bridge idea from Jersey into Midtown would have required such huge approaches to keep in grade that it would have jutted a comically long way into the center of the island. If you search you can find the conceptual sketch of it and it is a stupid large viaduct and bridge...made out of iron and masonry (as was typical at the time). Like, it would have been the biggest feature on Manhattan type big.

16:54 A GG1 with fresh Pennsylvania Railroad gold striped paint and a plaque that stated it had been restored by a railroad club I found at the front of my Broadway Limited passenger train in Harrisburg PA in June 1981. It really pulled! Once south of Philadelphia on our way to Washington we were passing what appeared to be Metroliner service trains with about a 50mph advantage. My ears would pop as we'd go under bridges. I clocked a mile at 22.5 seconds. That is 160 mph south of Wilmington DE. When got into Washington Union Station two of the passenger cars appeared to have smoke coming from their axle generators. We'd left Harrisburg about 1-1/2 hour late and got into Washington D.C. only 20 minutes late. The GG1 smelled of hot new transformers. Another B&O railroad story around Washington D.C. is when it lost rights over long bridge across the Potomac River into the southern United States to the Pennsylvania Railroad and the B&O being locked out of the southern United States by that situation pulled off a move somewhat in secret under the cover story of building a railroad from the B&O Metropolitan Branch between Washington and Point-of-Rocks MD starting in Silver Spring MD around the western hilly boundary terrain of Washington D.C. through Bethesda MD to the Palisades Dalecarlia area where a high Potomac River Bridge was to be built to cross the into Virginia. As an aside a much slower non mainline alignment would be constructed down the Palisades bluffs to run along the C&O canal to Georgetown.  The B&O railroad owned the C&O canal at that time. The Georgetown Branch still had its rails down when I was involved in its rail-to-trail conversion in the early 1990s. It was a pristine rail alignment I wanted preserve precisely as a paved bicycle path. Even though we had Karen Lee Ryan as chair at that time of the Coalition for the Capital Crescent Trail who the communications director at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy that organization placed no worth of preserving the rail alignment as a trail.  Montgomery Parks in charge of the project, as is typical of regular Parks department, was anti bicycle and didn't want to do anything that would encourage high level bicycle use and as such took advantage of every aspect to divert the trail not only away from the railroad alignment, but the corridor itself.   In order to promote and preserve the rail alignment as a paved bicycle path I came up with the term Rail-Trail and used that term on volunteer rail corridor clean up signup sheets. Karen Lee Ryan in a hoodie, who I didn't recognize at the time, but after going over my mental notes in 2021 I've concluded was the women in the hoodie jumping up and down like she'd won the lottery when looking at my Volunteer Rail-Trail Preparation signup sheet at my rail corridor clean event. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy took my term Rail-Trail and pushed it out all over world. They never told me they'd gotten it from me. Other people though seemed to know that looking back on conversations.

Really a fan of your long form “documentaries”, would love to see more especially on the auto industry

I don't know about FDR using a public railroad to commute between Washington, New York, and Hyde Park, but I have read that when he traveled between Washington and Hyde Park in the Presidential train, he preferred using the B&O. Because traveling at even modest speed on a train, the motion made him quite uncomfortable. His train usually traveled at around 30 m.p.h. and because the passenger travel on the B&O at the time was low enough that his train, which had right-of-way, would cause less public delay and inconvenience. His train arrived at and departed from a private platform under the Department of the Interior building in Washington and often used a private platform under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. I don't know which railroad rights of way his train used when New York City was on the itinerary.

Gosh, I hope that darn ahem "cold" gets better! 😁

thanks for uplading this videos about american rail companies . i like these videos. 👍👍👍🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪

As said by David P Morgan, Streamlining on steam locomotives was to lower customer resistance, not wind resistance.

Let's be honest, B&O/RDG/CNJ was really a line to Jersey City. The Jersey Central did not even connect to the Hudson & Manhattan tubes (present-day PATH train).

Notice the absence of cars in the old photos. Much more pedestrian friendly.

IIRC, the Hell's Gate Bridge was built along the New Haven Railroad and permitted extension of traffic to Boston on that railroad.

B&O owned the Reading and CNJ .

Note that Hell's Gate Bridge got that name because it crosses a portion of Long Island Sound named that due to the strong cross-currents in the water there. IIRC, the name originated with the Dutch sailors visiting New Amsterdam.

Nice video just one thing…… The northeast corridor is from Washington DC to Boston. Not Washington to New York, and from my regulation the Pennsylvania railroad never took over the New Haven railroad.

There are NO routes for emergencies like 9-11 Ukraine would have lost the war if it had cut back downsized unfunded Amtrak. With all extra cars scrapped. One route here and there with one train a day on it. The Poughkeepsie Bridge should be a rail line! And service on the Reading to Philly. The riders had to be Squeezed out of the trains. It was a different market a different route. There was heavy loading in New Jersey station. Not at end points of NY and Philly. The B&O trains disappeared for the same reason all the thousands of other trains disappeared they lost the package express and mail . Today that would be De joy run Post Office and XPO trucks and Fed Ex which is really a trucking company! Amtrak with a short underfunded try. Was forced out of even trying it.