Sisson Street is the first of many that cross over the Belt Line; it follows the route of what in 1894 was the Lake Roland Elevated Railway. This bridge version dates to 1914 plus a rehabilitation in 1950.

With a look to the future during the 1890s, the B&O constructed the Belt Line in a cut so as to avoid grade crossings. The Howard Street Tunnel plus this cut across the entire eastern half of the city were the most expensive parts of the Belt Line.

And you thought The Daily Grind was merely a coffee shop. Sometimes welds need the finishing touch only a track worker can apply personally.

The Sisson Street bridge is found just right of photo center. Sidings arc southeasterly to 24th Street while to the northeast a small yard catered to local businesses between Sisson and Huntingdon Avenue.

The half-donut shape to the west is a roundhouse of the Ma & Pa Railroad.

Maps suggest the fomer yard on the right had been equipped with a roundhose or turntable. If so, those accoutrements were gone by the time of a 1927 aerial photo.

The yard, plus adjacent home of Anderson Chevrolet since 1919, was slated for redevelopment as part of the "25th Street Station" project that was to include big box stores. Local opposition slowed progress to fits and starts, leaving an uncertain future and an underutilized parking lot where trains previously rested.

Anderson's facility had been a Baltimore & Hampden Railroad horsecar barn that was used by Leo Daft in 1885 for equipment that powered a streetcar line, the first electric railroad in the country.

One reason Anderson endured is they had a reputation for honest, reasonably-priced repairs, something all too uncommon from dealerships. I repair my own car mostly but once took it to Anderson for a difficult job, which they did correctly and without shortcuts.

Link: 25th Street Station

These support pads and others like it are the remains of five bridges that carried sidings from the Belt Line over 24th Street into industry on the south side (left). The bridges appear in 1927 and 1964 aerial photos, but not one from 1972.

On the right, the last vestiges of the sidings remain embedded in the tarmac. As a relative photo-position reference, note the distant tall cell tower in both photos.

Back at the Sisson Street bridge before redevelopment, one found these stranded dregs of the yard between Sisson and Huntingdon Avenue (distance). They and the CPLs would be gone within a few years. An 8-lamp assembly like this weighs roughly 200 pounds.

B&O's HU Tower had stood on left near the equipment box. During the initial six years of Belt Line operation, those revolutionary B&O electric motors that smokelessly hauled trains up through the Howard Street tunnel disconnected here for the return to Camden. The city grew so rapidly that in 1901 B&O extended the electric operation another mile east.

In this reverse view, double track necks down to single so as to be centered under the upcoming bridges where the maximum overhead clearance is found. During the early 1900s, a siding had peeled north to 26th Street as shown in the 1927 aerial view at right. HU Tower casts a shadow near that siding. B&O tore down the tower around 1960. The Sisson Street bridge is at the lower-left corner.

More recent aerial photos suggest at least one of these boxcars was stranded here during the 1980s. All were hauled out during 2007. Sumwalt Run, which begins near University Parkway, and which during the 1800s had supplied the Sumwalt Ice Pond just north of here, flows unseen in pipes below.

Increasing the clearance under bridges is complicated by old modifications like this of the roof of the bridge for Huntingdon Avenue, probably for a pipe under the street, but perhaps for a streetcar line.

In 1885, Huntingdon Avenue hosted the world's first electric streetcar line, inspiring the Belt Line's own electrification by B&O a decade later. A few blocks north, the long, spindly Huntingdon Avenue Viaduct carried streetcars over Stony Run until 1949.

Link: first streetcars

Change for: Huntingdon Avenue Viaduct tour at this site

After Huntingdon, the Belt Line tucks under Howard Street again via the Charles & Oak Street Tunnel. This time the tracks run perpendicular to Howard, formerly known as Oak Street north of the Jones Falls. Huntingdon Avenue gets its name from the Huntingdon Farm Dairy that had been on the right.

Deep zoom dating before 2010 finds this uncommon elevated mount of a dwarf CPL had signalled westbound trains at Charles Street.

The cut was made extra wide between Charles and Saint Paul Streets for a planned B&O station that never materialized.

Link: more pics (link not browser-friendly)

The extra width encouraged children to slide down the hill from 26th Street (above left) until in 1912 residents requested a wall. That retaining wall endured graffiti-free for a century until...

... one spring excessive rains did it in. "Hello, Geico? The railroad ate my new car."

Who was responsible for maintaining the wall? CSX and Baltimore City pointed fingers at each other, and both ended up contributing money to a settlement fund for impacted residents.

Links: collapse pics and video, Todd's Wall-Fall, cleanup videos

CSX reopened the track within days but a new wall took about a year and a half. Graffiti arrived 27 seconds later... and was photoshopped over in about the same amount of time.

Link: ~1912 pic

To keep Charles Village denizens smoke-free, the initial General Electric Company design supplied electricity to the helper motors on both tracks via a shared, single "third rail" overhead. The Guilford Avenue name is painted on the pole at right whose purpose otherwise is unknown. The overhead power was changed to ground-level supply shortly after this photo, where it remained into the 1950s.

Links: 2018 the new wall is fine, 2018 maybe not

Once diesel engines -- able to generate their own electricity -- became the norm, the catenary was removed and leafy greens allowed to fill in.

This bridge is scheduled to be replaced during the 2020s as part of the Howard Street Tunnel project.

Though snapped at roughly the same spot as the prior photo, three bridges are depicted instead of two because...

... as automobiles became more popular, Barclay Street got the bridge treatment too.

That must have happened sometime after the 1901 date of the Smithsonian photo above. If only there were a way to know exactly which year... Plans for the Howard Street Tunnel expansion call for this Barclay Street bridge to be removed rather than replaced.

Barclay got a bridge, in part, because it led to Oriole Park, seen at the top of the 1926/1927 aerial photo at left. Barclay is the street that runs vertically near the middle of the photo, with B&O horizontally at bottom. Careful alignment of this photo with a current one lets us measure the park's dimensions: 275 feet down the left field line, 400 to center, and 320 down the right field line. The Orioles who played here would claim seven consecutive International League championships from 1919 to 1925.

This Oriole Park, number five in a series of six so far, had opened in 1914 as part of the then-new Federal League. The Federal League endured only two seasons, but related subsequent litigation yielded an antitrust exemption in 1922 that is still enjoyed by Major League Baseball.

Looking back presents the visual form of what software coders call recursion, aka the Droste effect.

Link: at Wikipedia

Milepost 93 (left) is 1.1 miles east of mp 94.

The Greenmount Avenue bridge is the last of this group of overpasses. The far end retains its original brick arch, while the near end is a later concrete-over-corrigated steel addition to widen the road above.

East of Greenmount, the railroad has risen enough and the land dropped enough that crossings, if there were any, would be at grade.

B&O used that geographic opportunity to widen the right of way enough to permit extra tracks where the electric motors that boosted trains since Camden Station could decouple -- on the fly.

The photo linked below looks the opposite direction (west) from Waverly (SF) Tower back to an earlier version of the bridge over Loch Raven Road. The motors have decoupled from the steam locomotive (distance), accelerated ahead, and are switching onto center tracks so the train can pass.

The current version of the bridge, which dates to 1957, is numbered 6.

Link: motors decoupling

Where Loch Raven Road dips under the railroad, CSX has covered the old B&O heralds with its own now-faded signs.

In this vicinity, the Belt Line spans several city streets via bridges of similar designs. Rather than show them all, I'll include only a few notable ones, such as this over Garrett Avenue, named for B&O President John W. Garrett.

Garrett was also a founding trustee of Johns Hopkins University, just one of many connections between the railroad and the school. Pictured at right (courtesy the university) is the B&O stock certificate signed by Garrett that represents the bequest of Johns Hopkins that established the school. On the certificate, a sharp-eyed reader may notice the illustrated locomotive's lack of both an American-style pilot and external drive rods.

Though B&O did have inside-drive 4-4-0 engines (designs named "Dutch Wagon" and "Yankee Clock"), few examples were built. That suggests this certificate was engraved/printed in Britain where locomotives of that style were more common. Presumably Garrett himself approved the certificate design and either did not realize these details or chose to ignore them. Perhaps it should not surprise that the Garrett-era of B&O is generally not considered the railroad's best, to put it mildly.

The Garrett name is also known to numismatists after his grandson donated to the university one of the finest private coin collections ever assembled. One can follow Garrett Avenue southwest until reaching Green Mount Cemetery where both Garrett and Hopkins are buried in adjacent family plots (left).

Link: Garrett biography at Wikipedia

The land slopes such that Aisquith Street (near) dips under the railroad but Harford Road goes above. In between, defect detectors do their job. Low spots often hint where streams have been piped underground, and Aisquith is no exception: Homestead Run flows under the street, and the railroad, here.

Aisquith Street is named for Captain Edward Aisquith who helped defend Fort McHenry and Baltimore from British attack during the War of 1812.

Link: The Men Who Saved Baltimore

A track inspector's car is dwarfed by the Harford Road bridge.

The stone arch bridge was widened via a concrete addition on its east side during 1914. Expansions of one form or another have reformed many Belt Line bridges. This bridge is scheduled to be replaced during the 2020s as part of the Howard Street Tunnel project.

Looking back to the dip under Harford Road, mix 'n match fonts make milepost 92.

Parallel on the left is Clough Street which has taken the place of sidings. Rusty rails can still be found, as well as weed growth along their path.