1953 10 Shares Stock Certificate The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company Grades. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (reporting mark BO) was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States. It operated as B&O from 1830 until 1987, when it was merged into the Chessie System; its lines are today controlled by CSX Transportation. The railroad was founded to serve merchants from Baltimore who wanted to do business with settlers crossing the Appalachian Mountains. It would compete with several existing and proposed turnpikes and canals, including the Erie and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Building west from the port of Baltimore, the B&O reached Sandy Hook, Maryland, in 1834; Cumberland in 1842; the Ohio River at Moundsville, Virginia, in 1852; Wheeling, Virginia, in 1853; and in 1857, Parkersburg, Virginia, below rapids that made navigation difficult during parts of the year. The railroad, whose owners were Union sympathizers, proved crucial to the North's success during the American Civil War, which caused considerable damage to the system. After the Civil War, the B&O consolidated several feeder lines in Virginia and West Virginia, and expanded westward into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.