This painting depicts the memorable scene, Christmas Eve in 1852 when Maryland and Ohio were first joined by rail.
Time table giving the schedule of the B & O in early days.
One day in April, 1947, they hustled me to the Mt. Clare Shops. I was completely bewildered. I didn’t recognize the old shops where I had been built 112 years ago and where I had worked up to 1892. Everything was so much larger, and the great machines and cranes! And those big locomotives! Wow! Anyway, they began to work on me, and I soon realized that I was being changed back to the way I looked in 1892, before Major Pangborn had me changed to resemble (ugh!) the “Traveller.” Then, from the conversations I overheard, I pieced out the story, which is something like this:
Col. E. A. Deeds (there’s a nice man, if ever there was one, and interested in preserving a good old locomotive!), Chairman of the Board of The National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, was planning to establish a museum in Carillon Park in that city. And one of the things he needed was an old locomotive—and I was available and willing.
The Baltimore & Ohio Depot in Washington in 1835 when first train entered the nation’s capital. This was an event of great importance and one in which old No. 1 proudly participated. The President of the United States witnessed the arrival of the cavalcade led by the “Atlantic.”
So I was reconditioned and painted up until I could hardly believe 55 long years had passed. Then they pushed me out to the old Mt. Clare Station and photographed me. Goodness me, how memories flooded back over the years. The day, for instance, in 1835, when we lined up there before that same station for the first trip into Washington, D. C. I surely did feel proud, standing there having my picture taken.
The Thomas Viaduct on the B & O between Baltimore and Washington spanning the Patapsco River is the oldest railroad stone viaduct in the world. Built in 1835, many said it would not even support the three-and-a-half-ton Grasshoppers. Yet it has never faltered under the heaviest of modern trains.