Steam City: Railroads, Urban Space, and Corporate Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore

A related challenge for Baltimore's railroad boosters was that a railroad terminus could easily be transformed into a mere way station if construction continued beyond the original endpoint. [...]boosters were constantly fending off competing projects by arguing for the supremacy of their preferred route. Schley documents how the city council was grateful for the tracks running through the city because they brought order to traffic. Since wagons had to keep off tracks to avoid collisions or align themselves parallel to the tracks for the ease of loading and unloading, there were fewer street blockages overall. In constructing a new terminal in the less-developed Locust Point area of Baltimore, the B&O avoided disputes over the use of engines in the city. Because the residential neighborhood in that area grew up after the terminal was complete, residents there "found themselves grandfathered out of municipal restrictions on motive power and thus had to live with locomotives running past their houses at all hours" (118-19).