B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing 3.7

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Crossings at the Potomac River are a set of railroad bridges that span the Potomac River between Maryland Heights, Maryland and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in the United States.HistoryThe original Harper's Ferry operated from 1733 until it was replaced by a timber covered road bridge in about 1824 at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.In 1839, the B&O's first crossing over the Potomac was an 830ft covered wood truss. The single-track bridge, which comprised six river spans plus a span over the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II. Latrobe designed a "Y" span for the route to Winchester, which was added to the bridge in 1839. The bridge was destroyed during the American Civil War and was subsequently replaced by temporary structures.In 1851, a second bridge was built across the Shenandoah becoming was one of the earliest Bollman trusses in existence. A newer Bollman truss bridge, which carried both rail and highway traffic, opened in 1870. It was washed away in a flood in 1936.The two crossing today, which are on different alignments, are from the late 19th century and early 20th century. A steel Pratt truss and plate girder bridge was built in 1894 to carry the B&O Valley line (now the CSX Shenandoah Subdivision) toward Winchester, Virginia along the Shenandoah River. This was complimented in 1930-31 with a deck plate girder bridge that carries the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) main line to Martinsburg, West Virginia (the line is now the CSX Cumberland Subdivision).