The man behind the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s Belt Line
Lawrence McCabe (Baltimore Sun file photo)
William John Wilgus, who designed and supervised construction of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal which opened in 1913, studied the B & O’s Belt Line electrification, a three-mile stretch of track that passed under Howard Street and through the new Mount Royal Station.
The challenge faced by McCabe and Wilgus was the same: how to free tunnels of accumulated smoke and gases from steam engines. The answer was having trains pulled by electric engines or motors, as they are called, thus freeing tunnels from deadly gases and smoke.
The Belt Line project marked the first mainline electrification of a steam railroad in the world.
McCabe’s firm, L. B. McCabe & Bro., constructed Manhattan’s Interborough Rapid Transit System which began carrying passengers in 1904.
Locally, he also constructed the water tunnel connecting Loch Raven to Montebello and the North Avenue and St. Paul Street bridges.
The colonel’s white-columned mansion, “Linden,” still stands on York Road in Govans, and McCabe Avenue honors his memory.
His last project, the Holland Tunnel, which connected New Jersey and New York City, reunited McCabe and Wilgus, who was the consulting engineer for the vehicular tunnel which opened in 1927.
McCabe died in 1921 and is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery on Homeland Avenue.
Click here to read more about the back story on the construction of Grand Central Terminal.
