Impressive $5,000,000 antique refunding and general mortgage bond of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, carrying a rate of 5%, issued June 27, 1918, 12.75 x 9.5, with attractive upper vignette of the world’s first stone archway railway bridge, completed in 1835 near Baltimore, Maryland. In fine condition.
The oldest passenger railroad in the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is now part of the CSX network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the world. The railroad, formally incorporated April 24, 1827 was intended to provide an alternative, faster route for Midwestern goods to reach the East Coast than the seven-year-old, highly successful, but slow Erie Canal across upstate New York. Philip E. Thomas was elected as the first president and George Brown as the treasurer. The capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars. In the U.S. version of the board game Monopoly, the B&O is well known as one of the four railroad properties on the board.
