bsm winter hiatus continues through march available exclusively in

Volume 46, Number 3
BSM WINTER HIATUS
CONTINUES THROUGH
MARCH
Improvement Projects Still in Process
By Dave Wilson
A substantial endeavor is underway on next phase of track
work in front of the museum's visitors center. The
installation of this crossover and the associated changes to
the yard area, will allow doubled ended cars to reverse
ends at the south end of the line without entering the yard
area, and without using the loop. This will allow the
operating staff to demonstrate how double ended cars were
reversed in the days before loops became prevalent.
Pictured (l-r) are Mark Dawson, Ed Amrhein, and Dennis
Yeager. In the photo on the right, above, (l-r) are Amrhein,
Yeager and Charles Hughes along with associated rail
frogs and switch points to be installed. This is a big job
and if you are willing to assist, I'm sure your talents will
be put to good use. Of course, once the track work is
completed, our overhead lines people will still need to
alter the existing trolley wire to allow full operation.
Would you like to lend a hand? After all, many hands
make light work, they say...
January-February-March 2016
AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY
IN THE BSM GIFT SHOP:
GREAT READS DONATED BY
THE MARYLAND RAIL
HERITAGE LIBRARY
January-February-March 2016
T$H$E LIVE WIRE
Page 2.
TWO
BELLS
By Jerry Kelly
is published by the Museum for the enjoyment of its members and
friends.
THE LIVE WIRE
j The Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Inc.
Post Office Box 4881
Baltimore, Maryland 21211
YOUR COMMENTS AND IDEAS ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED!
LIVE WIRE STAFF
Contributing Editors ............................................ Raymond Cannon
Jerry Kelly
John J. O’Neill, Jr.
Mailing Detail .................................................................. Jerry Kelly
Managing Editor ............................................................. Jim Walsh
The Museum’s Board of Trustees meetings are held the first
Wednesday of each month, except August, at the Museum’s
Visitor’s Center auditorium. All members in good standing are
invited and encouraged to attend Board Meetings which begin at
7:30 P.M. Correspondence and submissions for The Live Wire
may be addressed to the Museum’s post office listed above.
© MMXVI, The Baltimore Streetcar Museum, Inc.
www.baltimorestreetcar.org
www.facebook.com/baltimorestreetcarmuseumInc
After reviewing the last Live Wire and the
report on route 12 it got me to thinking. Looking at the map
of the area around Park, John, etc. I can remember riding in
that area around 1940 or so. What got my eye was track in
the street but no wire. I ask my father about this and he said
one time streetcars ran here but no longer. I don't remember
him saying any more about this. Later I remember riding
route 14 along Saratoga Street and at Schroeder Street you
saw tracks on Schroeder Street but they did not connect with
Saratoga. There was no wire above them. I remember as I
grew older and became a teenager, that I learned more and
more about the mystery of where streetcars of the past ran.
This brings us to the topic this issue, Route 21 as a rail line.
Back in the early 1900s it ran from Park Terminal to foot of
Broadway. It went e/b along Fulton Ave, s/b on
Pennsylvania across PRW to Fulton and s/b to Lanvale,
Myrtle, to Dolphin, and on to Broadway by its regular route.
In 1926 the west end of the rail route was changed as
follows: At Dolphin it went s/b on Schroeder to Saratoga,
w/b to Gilmore, then s/b on Gilmore to Lombard and the
w/b on Lombard to Smallwood. It used a street loop to
return e/b on Pratt and returned the same route. Now this
answered the questions of the tracks on Schroeder Street.
They were never used again. The route stayed the same to
March 6, 1938 when this became the first Trackless Trolley
line for BTC.
When it became a TT line it almost resumed its old route to
the west past Schroeder. If you review the old rail and new
TT maps, you will see the changes. A few other facts about
the rail line; The loop track it used at Lombard and
Smallwood stayed in service to the end of rail service.
While you never saw Smallwood Street in the pocket size
guides it was on the roll signs of PCC cars. More than once
in the late 50s or early 60s I would drive downtown from
Catonsville to meet my wife when she finished work. From
time to time in evening rush hour would see a lone PCC
using Smallwood Street as a cut back. This was same track
that was used in the early AM hours.
BTCo Route 21 Map
Courtesy of Jerry Kelly
Another fact about rail route 21 was its all night service.
While rail service to Halethorpe was in place, its all night
service was provided by rail route 21.
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Page 3.
The
President’s
Message
By John J. O’Neill, Jr.
The warm weather of Spring is just around the corner as is
the reopening of the Museum on April 3 after our first
winter shut down. The time gave us a chance to get some
much needed work planned and laid out in the Museum
yard where new switches and connections have been
projected for a long time.
Baltimore Transit Company Trackless
Trolley 2078, left, built in 1940 by the
Pullman Standard Car Mfg. Company
(Two Bells continued)
And now a point to ponder. In its last years of service, it
operated from the Potomac Street Car House. Very few
photos are found of this property and little is known about
the building. We do know, however, that the Potomac Street
Car House was one of the few barns in Baltimore that had a
transfer table. More in upcoming Two Bells about transfer
AKA shifter tables.
Another point to ponder concerns the new TTs that were
delivered to Baltimore for route 21. I learned by way of
mouth, that they were delivered to Carroll Park but TT route
21 operated from Potomac Street. Did BTC not only string
new wire for TT route 21 but did it at that time string wire
from Carroll Park to the area of Howard and Dolphin?
Route 27 was rail up to January 1, 1939 when it became the
second TT line for BTC.
Let us hear from you. Several good letters were received
after the last Live Wire and they will be used. So please ask
questions, correct errors, or just add your 2 cents worth, we
do think it is worth much more then 2 cents.
We have also successfully completed our
corporate registration with Baltimore City for our Museum
License and our charitable organization with the Maryland
Secretary of State’s Office. In addition, we have once
again registered in the Maryland Charity Campaign which
qualifies us to obtain donations from active and retired
state employees. If you know of any such folks, please
pass along to them that they can donate to the Museum
using a convenient payroll deduction process.
On the grants front, we applied for a Maryland
Heritage Area of the Maryland Historical Trust for the
conservation of the movie film that has been accumulated
by the Library. Much of it is old enough to be
deteriorating, so time is important to assure that the images
on it are not lost to future generations. Each reel has to be
evaluated, cleaned, reviewed and sent to an image
processor that converts it from film to digital media on
hard drives. It will then be cataloged and included in the
historical record available to researchers and potentially
become a basis for exhibits at the Museum.
So even though we have been closed to the public,
a lot of work has been accomplished. Why not plan on
coming down to the Museum in April and get involved?
See you at the Museum.
January-February-March 2016
T$H$E LIVE WIRE
Page 4.
Bollman's major surviving work is, ironically, not a bridge,
but the cast iron dome atop City Hall."
The Lombard Street Bridge was built in 1877. It is (here
comes the controversy) believed to be the only bridge of
its kind in existence. Knowledgeable Maryland History
fans will immediately quote the inscription from another
Historical Marker; "Spanning the Little Patuxent River is
the sole surviving example of the bridging system
invented, 1850, by Wendel Bollman, Baltimore engineer.
It was the first system, entirely of iron, used by the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad and the first in America.
Through 1873 the company built about 100 such bridges.”
Baltimore History Along the BSM Wayside
Bridge in the woods
Just north of the switch where the BSM double track ends
and the single track begins, an 88-foot-long cast iron span
parallels the Streetcar Tracks. On occasion, Operators
answer queries about the 139-year-old Bridge, inevitably
stimulating discussion among passengers. The builder of
the bridge, Wendel Bollman, worked for the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad. He was born a little less than two miles
south of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum on South Calvert
Street. A Historical Marker at the present day United
States Fidelity and Guaranty Company building, located at
26 South Calvert reads; "Wendel Bollman, one of a
handful of men who transformed bridge-building from an
art into a science, was born on this site to German parents
on January 21, 1814. Largely self-educated, Bollman
acquired his engineering knowledge and experience at the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Under the tutelage of
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the railroad's chief engineer,
Bollman worked his way up from apprentice to "Master of
the Road." In 1852, Bollman patented his iron suspension
truss bridge. The B&O immediately began replacing its
wooden spans with Bollman's bridges, and Latrobe hailed
him as the "first successful iron bridge builder in this
country." This successful use of iron by the country's most
eminent railroad, and its endorsement by Latrobe spurred
the adoption of iron as a primary bridge building material.
By the late 1850's, iron bridge-building was well
established throughout the world. In 1858, Bollman
formed his own company, pioneering in the design and
construction of iron bridges throughout the United States,
as well as in Mexico, Cuba, and Chile. In his native town,
So how can two Bollman Bridges each be the "sole
surviving example"? The Bollman Truss Bridge formerly
carrying Lombard Street across the Jones Falls stream is
unique. It was designed by James Curran of the Baltimore
water department, and built by Bollman. In the Lombard
Street Bridge, the top and bottom beams of the central line
of trussing are cast-iron water mains, splitting where the
Bridge meets the land. They are tied together by wrought
and cast-iron truss members.
All bridges deal with the forces of compression and
tension. Imagine yourself walking across a fallen tree that
spans a small creek. When your feet press on the tree
trunk, they cause compression of the wood that they
contact, and it bends in. The underside of the tree trunk is
lengthened by tension, and it will snap when it can deform
no more. Truss Bridges distribute these two forces through
lattice work which are usually triangle shaped, dissipating
the compression and tension through the entire structure.
Truss Bridges incorporate four beams, called chords. The
two bottom chords run parallel for the length of the
Bridge. Iron inclined tension members, called obliques or
ties, are connected to the trusses. When a load is put onto
the bridge, chords are in compression and tension. The
upper chords run parallel for less than the full length of the
bridge, and are connected to the lower chords by vertical
and diagonal beams. The top chord is in compression
when a load is added to the bridge. The Lombard Street
Bridge consists of three sets of trusses, two Pratt outer
trusses made of composite cast and wrought iron and a
center composite bowstring truss of Pratt-System
members. The Bridge over the Little Patuxent River was
designed by Bollman and its trusses are the patented
Bollman Trusses. The bridge over the Little Patuxent is
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Page 5.
1951 photo of
the Lombard
Street Bridge
shows design
elements.
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T$H$E LIVE WIRE
The Baltimore Streetcar Museum would like to acknowledge the following individuals
who have made donations during the period of December 2015 through February 2016.
These include the memorial donations for deceased members, contributions for car restoration
and donations of money or materials and services. We greatly appreciate their generosity and
apologize to anyone we missed.
John Buxton
Thomas Caldwell
Daniel & Sandra Coleman
Wayne Coleman
Michael De Walt
James & Betty Gasper
Carol Gesser
James & Elizabeth Haven
Mark Hellman
Mark & Margaret Hurley
James Hutzler
Richard Lanham Sr.
Thomas Leach
Frederick Maloney
Jack May
Charles Plantholt
Thomas & Katherine Ritterhoff
Special thanks to Mr. Paul Kwashnak - general manager at M. B. Klein for the donation of a
cash register for use in the BSM store.
(For those who may not be familiar with M. B. Klein - located in Cockeysville - the firm is a long
established business that sells model trains and associated materials. Many of our members
will remember Klein's from the many years when the firm was located on Gay St, in downtown
Baltimore.)
Ray Cannon
Page 6.
January-February-March 2016
T$H$E LIVE WIRE
not the original, which was built in 1850. The Bridge now
in Savage, Maryland, was built in 1852 and moved to the
B&O branch in 1888.
The National Park Service Nomination Form for the
National Register of Historic Places calls the Lombard
Street Bridge a "Bollman Water Pipe Truss". Great plans
were made for the Bollman Water Pipe Truss when, after
nearly a century of service, it could no longer bear the
increasingly heavy traffic on Lombard Street. It was to be
moved to a 19th century industrial mill complex near
Catonsville and was intended to cross a stream by
Wetheredsville Road. The point for the crossing to be
bridged by the Bollman Water Pipe Truss was altered by
Hurricane Agnes. Kevin Rector wrote in the Baltimore
Sun on June 20, 2012 of Hurricane Agnes' impact on June
20, 1972: "Such was the immediate and sudden presence
in the old mill town of Tropical Storm Agnes, an episode
of massive destruction that would become one of the worst
natural disasters ever to hit Maryland and one of the
costliest storms in the nation's history, with billions of
dollars in estimated damages." The historic Mill was no
longer accessible. So the Lombard Street Bridge was
moved to storage in its present location, an incongruous
structure in the woods at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum.
Iron has been replaced by steel, as steel is stronger and
able to temporarily deform in reaction to compression and
tension while resisting fracture. Bollman's Iron Bridges
HOW MUCH WAS THAT
CARFARE?
Page 7.
represented great progress over wooden bridges, and
allowed the B&O to expand so raw materials could be
brought to production centers and finished products could
reach distant markets. His Bridges supported the progress
of our Nation while bridging the gaps which impeded the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.
Photograph of Baltimore Transit car number 5666
outbound on Lombard Street at Falls Avenue in Baltimore,
Maryland, 04-30-52. Photograph Courtesy of Miller
Library, Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
_______________________________________________
Many members of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum
Volunteer Staff remember Baltimore Transit Company
rates like four tokens for ninety cents. Many members also
recall 90% Silver coins. From the Spring of 1959 through
the Fall of 1961, the U.S. Treasury’s Silver Supply (not
counting what was saved to pay those old Silver
Certificates) dropped from 222,000,000 ounces to
22,000,000 ounces. Demand for Silver by industry simply
drove the value too high to keep minting Silver coins.
Copper-Nickel Clad coins were minted starting in 1965.
The 90% Silver coins have a melt value and sometimes a
numismatic value.
A Mint State 67 Franklin Half from 1948 sold for $4,350
in February, 2015, at Heritage Auctions. Ira and Larry
Goldberg Auctioneers realized $10,063 for a 1919
Mercury Dime in the same condition. You might have
owned a Streetcar today if you only saved your allowance!
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Page 8.
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Page 9.
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Page 10.
Santa's Trolley part 2-- the 2nd weekend was also busy as Santa again entertained kids and
adults alike. Mike Citro again assisted Santa while Sharon Citro kept the coffee water hot and
the cookie trays filled. (This writer helped with the latter - I would keep snatching up cookies.)
Everyone seemed to enjoy the marvelous holiday decorations and train garden. All that is gone
as Justin Thillman has 'defrocked' the Museum. (Sobering thought - we get do it again just 7
months from now.) **** Not much is going on at BSM while the museum is closed. Buster Hughes and Abe Zumwalt were
observed replacing weather stripping on some car windows. Track switch parts were brought to the yard area and prepared for
eventual installation as part of a new track arrangement. John La Costa has ordered new trolley frogs (the piece that allows 2
wires to merge above the track switch). These will replace frogs that are well past their useful life. **** Streetcar fix -- since
street cars are not running at BSM I had to go elsewhere to ride. So one day I took a MARC train to Washington to ride the
new DC streetcar. Caught up in the bureaucratic 'wheel' for several years streetcars finally returned to service along the H St. Benning Road corridor on Feb. 27th. The grand opening occurred 54 years and 1 month after streetcars last rolled along
Pennsylvania Ave in late January 1962. The line begins on the H St. bridge at Union Station and runs east about 25 blocks to
Oklahoma Ave. This is a real streetcar line that runs entirely in the street and is subjected to delays caused by improperly
parked vehicles and traffic congestion. At car stops the operators get to annoy motorists by forcing them to go around. This
line is unusual for Washington because it runs from overhead wire in an area where wires are not permitted. Streetcars (not
light rail) run Mondays through Saturdays from early morning to late at night.
Check out the DC streetcar website (dcstreetcar.com) for more info regarding fares and hours of operation.