Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Collection Contains Rare Cecil County B & O Railroad Images

The Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP), an independent research library focused on American Society and Culture, has an extensive collection of non-circulating rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs and works of art.  Building on those strong resources, this repository, Americans’ oldest cultural institution, has been busy creating digital products to share with a broader audience of scholars and public investigators.

Today we were using that valuable tool for studying the past, Google, searching for seldom seen photos of some of the old B & O Railroad stations along the company line in Cecil County.  The search engine immediately took us to the LCP’s online exhibit of the railroad’s Philadelphia Division images.

In March 1891, a group of B & O employees set out from Baltimore riding on a railroad hand cart to inspect and photograph bridges and stations along the recently completed 111-mile Philadelphia Division linking Baltimore and Philadelphia.   Along the right-of-way the group photographed 78 bridges and culverts and 37 of the nearly 70 stations on the line.

We were delighted to find many seldom seen photos of stations and railroad properties in Delaware and northeastern Maryland and thought our readers might have an interest in this resource.  There are also other digital collections.

Thank you Library Company of Philadelphia for helping to make these materials readily available.

Click here to reach the full online Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Collection Album