Buffalo & Susquehanna

Company History: The B&S was born in 1893 when Frank and Charles Goodyear consolidated their railroad properties in New York and Pennsylvania. The brothers had considerable timber interests in the area and needed the B&S to serve them. By 1905, B&S ran from Addison and Wellsville, New York southwest to Sagamore. By this time, coal had become the chief commodity on the southern half of the railroad. The timber business along with the tanning industry (hides – not people) kept the trains running on the north end. The following year, B&S built a 90 mile extension to their Wellsville line going all the way to Buffalo. Then Frank Goodyear died and things became difficult for the B&S. The Buffalo line was abandoned after just 10 disappointing years of poor traffic. Baltimore & Ohio purchased the B&S in 1932. Operations and car and locomotive fleets were integrated with B&O but the B&S remained a paper railroad until at least 1956 when much of the B&S was sold to the new Wellsville Addison & Galeton Railroad.

Successor/Parent History: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (reporting marks B&O, BO) is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal (which served New York City) and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with an original line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia (now West Virginia) over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. From there it passed through Virginia from Harpers Ferry to a point just west of the junction of Patterson Creek and the North Branch Potomac River where it crossed back into Maryland to reach Cumberland. From there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia.

It is now part of the CSX Transportation (CSX) network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA. The B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U.S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto: "Linking 13 Great States with the Nation." Part of the B&O Railroad's immortality has come from being one of the four featured railroads on the U.S. version of the board game Monopoly, but it is the only railroad on the board which did not serve Atlantic City, New Jersey, directly.

When CSX established the B&O Railroad Museum as a separate entity from the corporation, some of the former B&O Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore, including the Mt. Clare roundhouse, were donated to the museum while the rest of the property was sold. The B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles' current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) or the Reading and its subsidiaries.

Read more on Wikipedia.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.