Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad: Map and History
Last revised: September 15, 2026
By: Adam Burns
The Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal was the parent’s Chicago machine: an L of freight yards, industrial leads, and a passenger throat into Grand Central Station. The Baltimore & Ohio formed it on January 6, 1910 as a wholly owned company to buy the bankrupt Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad at foreclosure. The Transfer was only the last name on a stack that began with the La Salle & Chicago of 1867. At its peak in the 1920s the B&OCT reported about 78 route-miles and 365 miles of track, plus 42 miles of rights, and touched 34 railroads at 54 points. It handled on the order of 3,500 cars a day, about half of them for the B&O. The company still exists on paper as a CSX subsidiary. Reporting mark BOCT.
Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal 0-8-0 #1704 appears to be carrying out switching chores at the Lincoln Street Coach Yard on March 25, 1956.
On this page: At a glance · La Salle, Villard, and the Transfer · The L · Grand Central Station · Cars, tenants, and the 34 connections · Barr Yard · Steam · Diesel roster · Chessie, CSX, and what remains
At a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois (Grand Central Station, 201 West Harrison Street) |
| Formed | January 6, 1910, to acquire the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad |
| Earliest predecessor | La Salle & Chicago Railroad, 1867 |
| Dates of operation | January 6, 1910–present (CSX paper subsidiary) |
| Route-miles (1930) | 78 |
| Track-miles (1930) | 365, plus 42 miles of trackage rights |
| Shape | A rough L: Whiting, Indiana, west and north to Forest Park, Illinois, with a south leg Blue Island–Chicago Heights |
| Passenger throat | About 34 miles, Pine Junction (NE Tower) to Grand Central Station |
| Peak work | On the order of 3,500 cars a day; about half for the B&O. Connections with 34 railroads at 54 points |
| Notable yards | Barr Yard, Riverdale / Blue Island. Lincoln Street Coach Yard |
| Gauge | 4 feet 8½ inches |
| Reporting mark | BOCT |
| Parent | Baltimore & Ohio; Chesapeake & Ohio control 1963; Chessie System June 15, 1973; CSX thereafter |
| Places on the L | Pine Junction, Whiting, Hammond, East Chicago, South Chicago, Blue Island, Chicago Heights, McCook, Franklin Park, Forest Park, Bellwood, Forest Hill, Calumet Park, Grand Central Station |
Kirk Reynolds and David Oroszi, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, is the company narrative for the predecessors and the 1910 purchase. Mileage and connection counts are the 1920s–1930 peak. Information compiled September 15, 2026.
La Salle, Villard, and the Transfer
Kirk Reynolds and David Oroszi put the earliest predecessor as the La Salle & Chicago Railroad, formed in 1867. Its charter later sat with a terminal company styled Chicago & Great Western—not the later Corn Belt Route of the same nickname. In 1885 that terminal opened from Forest Park, on the city’s west side, into downtown. The passenger house was on Polk Street. Wisconsin Central trains used it, and so did the Minnesota & North Western, which became the Chicago Great Western.
Henry Villard’s Northern Pacific took the Wisconsin Central to give the transcontinental a Chicago door. In 1890 NP formed the Chicago & Northern Pacific to operate the terminal. Villard, sure of the connection, built Grand Central Station. It opened December 8, 1890. The architecture, the clock tower, and the wrecking ball are the Grand Central page. What matters here is ownership: the station was a C&NP building before it was a B&O building.
The B&O itself had been in Chicago since November 23, 1874, when the Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago opened and trains used Illinois Central rights downtown. Adams Street, then Monroe Street, then Grand Central. The B&O began using the station in 1891, reaching it on trackage rights over the Rock Island and the Pennsylvania between South Chicago and Western Avenue.
The same Villard circle owned the Chicago & Calumet Terminal, which ran from Whiting, Indiana—where it met the B&O—to McCook, Illinois, and an Santa Fe interchange. With the Chicago, Hammond & Western, a predecessor of the Indiana Harbor Belt, the Calumet Terminal jointly operated Blue Island to Franklin Park. At Franklin Park the Milwaukee Road came in. In 1890 the C&NP bought the Chicago Central Railway, downtown Chicago to Blue Island, and tied the Calumet line to the passenger station.
The Panic of 1893 forced Villard out of both the C&NP and the Wisconsin Central. The Wisconsin Central later passed to the Soo Line. The C&NP was reorganized in 1897 as the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad, which then took the Calumet Terminal back. In 1898 a south leg opened from Blue Island to Chicago Heights, meeting the Michigan Central / New York Central and the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern.
By the early 1900s the Transfer was in bankruptcy. The B&O had leased Grand Central in 1900 and could see the value of owning the whole Chicago plant instead of renting pieces of it. On January 6, 1910 it incorporated the Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad and bought the Transfer. From that day the L was a B&O company.
The L
Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal system map, 1910. Author’s collection.
On a map the B&OCT is a rough L laid over the south and west sides of Chicago, with the foot in Indiana. The east–west bar ran from Whiting and Pine Junction across Hammond, East Chicago, and the Calumet district to Blue Island, then on toward McCook and the Santa Fe. The north–south bar climbed from Blue Island through Forest Hill and Brighton Park toward the Milwaukee Road at Franklin Park and the old Forest Park terminal, then turned east to Grand Central. A south spur from Blue Island reached Chicago Heights. The primary passenger and road-freight main was about 34 miles from NE Tower at Pine Junction to the trainshed on Harrison Street.
That is not a belt in the EJ&E sense, and it is not the inner circle of the Belt Railway of Chicago. It is a terminal owned by one trunk, built to put that trunk into a downtown station and to gather and deliver cars among the other 33 roads it touched. The Chicago & Western Indiana did a similar job on the Dearborn Station side. The Harbor Belt did it for the New York Central and the Milwaukee. The B&OCT did it for the B&O, and then, because the plant was there, for anyone the B&O would let in.
Grand Central Station
Solon Spencer Beman designed Grand Central as a Norman castle at 201 West Harrison Street, west of the Loop. The building ran 228 feet by 482, more than 110,000 square feet inside, with a 247-foot clock tower. It opened December 8, 1890, the second of Chicago’s second-generation passenger terminals; Dearborn Station had opened in 1883. The B&O leased it in 1900 and, through the Chicago Terminal, owned and ran it after 1910. The Capitol Limited and the rest of the parent’s Chicago varnish used it. So did the tenants below. Amtrak did not keep the station. The building came down in 1971. The station encyclopedia is Grand Central Station. The B&OCT’s job was to get trains into it and cars out of Lincoln Street Coach Yard, where 0-8-0 #1704 was still working in March 1956.
Cars, tenants, and the 34 connections
Switching was the living. Road freights came off the B&O at Pine Junction and were broken, classified, and forwarded. Industry along the Calumet, at Blue Island, and on the west side generated its own cars. Interchange at 54 points with 34 companies was the reason a trunk bothered to own a terminal instead of paying the Belt or the Harbor Belt by the move. Peak-era figures put daily volume around 3,500 cars, nearly half billed to the B&O itself.
Other roads used the tracks to reach Grand Central. The Pere Marquette came in that way, as did the Chicago Great Western and the Wisconsin Central / Soo Line. After the C&O took the Pere Marquette in 1947 and then took control of the B&O in 1963, Chessie varnish used the same throat. The station was never as busy as Union or Dearborn. It did not have to be. It had to be the B&O’s, and it was.
Barr Yard
Barr Yard at Riverdale, on the Blue Island side of the L, was the freight plant. A three-year expansion finished in 1948. The receiving yard was rated 345 cars eastbound and 500 westbound; the classification yard, 1,144 eastbound and 1,209 westbound. There was a turntable and roundhouse, RIP tracks, and a stock-car servicing yard. Parent B&O used Barr as the Chicago shop for road locomotives that came in off the Willard line. Locals and transfers ran from there to the Harbor Belt at Blue Island, to the EJ&E, to South Chicago, and around the L to the west side. For most of the CSX era Barr remained the company’s principal Chicago classification yard—flat-switched, not a hump—until the 2026 cutback described below.
Steam
The terminal did not buy a steam roster of its own in the way it later bought EMD switchers. Power was parent B&O, assigned to Chicago and often lettered B&OCT: 0-6-0s in the earlier years, then the heavy 0-8-0s of the L classes that Mount Clare and the shops rebuilt from Consolidations. The engine in the photograph at the top of this page is #1704, a Class L-3, rebuilt from a 2-8-0 and previously numbered 799. Sister #1703, formerly 798, was photographed switching the Capitol Limited at Grand Central in 1955. Both were still on the property in the mid-1950s. Parent steam came off the railroad by 1959. The class table for those 0-8-0s is on the B&O steam roster.
Diesel roster
The first diesel on the property was parent B&O EMC SW #2, Electro-Motive serial 653, order E152, December 1936. It was rebuilt as SW1 #199 in May 1942 and later numbered 8422. The parent diesel roster carries that unit as Chicago Terminal work. Dedicated B&OCT purchases were seventeen EMD switchers: six SW1s in 1942, three NW2s in January 1943, eight SW9s in 1952. All were lettered B&OCT and painted in the B&O blue dip with gold lettering. Parent Geeps and switchers worked alongside them. Some Alco S-2s and later B&O SW9s were lettered B&OCT in photographs without being part of the seventeen. In 1982 GP15Ts lettered for the Chesapeake & Ohio / Chessie System largely replaced the early switchers. The B&OCT units took B&O system numbers in January 1974.
The SW1s were order E462, serials 1601–1606, delivered May–August 1942—two years after the parent’s own SW1s 200–215 (order E324). The NW2s were order E463, serials 1729–1731, January 1943. The SW9s were order 6366, serials 15886–15893, February–April 1952. That is the complete dedicated diesel fleet. Unit identities and dispositions follow Extra 2200 South as compiled by John Komanesky at The Diesel Shop, with builder dates from the Unofficial EMD Homepage.
Dedicated fleet by model
| Model | First numbers | 1974 numbers | Serials | Order | Built | Qty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SW1 | 216–221 | 8416–8421 | 1601–1606 | E462 | 5/1942–8/1942 | 6 |
| NW2 | 409–411 | 9509–9511 | 1729–1731 | E463 | 1/1943 | 3 |
| SW9 | 590–597 | 9600–9607 | 15886–15893 | 6366 | 2/1952–4/1952 | 8 |
All-time dedicated units
| First no. | 1974 no. | Model | Serial | Built | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 216 | 8416 | SW1 | 1601 | 5/1942 | To B&O 8416, 1/74. Later RELCO 510, then National Lime & Stone S304 |
| 217 | 8417 | SW1 | 1602 | 5/1942 | To B&O 8417, 1/74. Sold for scrap, 4/76 |
| 218 | 8418 | SW1 | 1603 | 5/1942 | To B&O 8418, 1/74. Later Evans Milling, then Allied Tube & Conduit |
| 219 | 8419 | SW1 | 1604 | 5/1942 | To B&O 8419, 1/74. Later RAIX / Purina 8419; Little Traverse Scenic; Alanson & Petoskey; Leelanau Scenic |
| 220 | 8420 | SW1 | 1605 | 5/1942 | Sold to Naparano Iron & Metal, 4/68, and scrapped (gone before the 1974 system numbers took effect) |
| 221 | 8421 | SW1 | 1606 | 5/1942 | To B&O 8421, 1/74. Later Central Station Warehouse |
| 409 | 9509 | NW2 | 1729 | 1/1943 | To B&O 9509, 1/74. Traded to EMD, 8/85 |
| 410 | 9510 | NW2 | 1730 | 1/1943 | To B&O 9510, 1/74. To Chrome Crankshaft, 4/79 |
| 411 | 9511 | NW2 | 1731 | 1/1943 | To B&O 9511, 1/74. To Luntz Corp., 4/74 |
| 590 | 9600 | SW9 | 15886 | 2/1952 | To B&O 9600, 1/74. Later Bartlett Grain 9600, then RELCO 1250 |
| 591 | 9601 | SW9 | 15887 | 3/1952 | To B&O 9601, 1/74. Later sold |
| 592 | 9602 | SW9 | 15888 | 3/1952 | To B&O 9602, 1/74. To Birmingham Rail & Locomotive, 6/86 |
| 593 | 9603 | SW9 | 15889 | 3/1952 | To B&O 9603, 1/74. To Amtrak 709, renumbered 799 |
| 594 | 9604 | SW9 | 15890 | 4/1952 | To B&O 9604, 1/74. Traded to EMD, 12/83 |
| 595 | 9605 | SW9 | 15891 | 4/1952 | To B&O 9605, 1/74. To Birmingham Rail & Locomotive, 12/85 |
| 596 | 9606 | SW9 | 15892 | 4/1952 | To B&O 9606, 1/74. To Birmingham Rail & Locomotive, 6/86 |
| 597 | 9607 | SW9 | 15893 | 4/1952 | To B&O 9607, 1/74. Traded to EMD, 12/83 |
Serial-to-number pairs follow Extra 2200 South / The Diesel Shop. Builder dates follow EMD order E462 (May and August 1942), E463 (January 1943), and 6366 (February–April 1952). Parent SW #2 / 199 / 8422 is on the B&O diesel roster, not in the table.
Chessie, CSX, and what remains
C&O control of the B&O closed February 4, 1963. Chessie System, Inc. became parent of the C&O, B&O, and Western Maryland on June 15, 1973. The B&O corporate name was merged into the C&O on April 30, 1987; the C&O into CSX Transportation on August 31. The Chicago Terminal was not dissolved with the parent. It remained a paper company, still the owner of record for the old L, reporting mark still BOCT. From Pine Junction west, CSX’s Chicago approach is still B&OCT property: the Barr Subdivision through Calumet, State Line, and Barr Yard, and the Blue Island side toward the west-side leads.
Grand Central is gone. Lincoln Street is not a coach yard. Barr Yard, after decades as CSX’s main Chicago classification plant, was cut back in April 2026. Most switching moved to the Belt Railway’s Clearing Yard and the Indiana Harbor Belt’s Blue Island Yard. Locals and a smaller inventory remained at Riverdale. The iron is still there. The company is still there, on paper, under CSX, which is what a terminal subsidiary is for: to hold the deeds while the trains run in someone else’s paint.
Related reading on American-Rails.com
- Baltimore & Ohio · Grand Central Station (Chicago) · Capitol Limited
- B&O steam roster (post-1900) · B&O diesel roster
- Chesapeake & Ohio · Chessie System · CSX · Pere Marquette
- Indiana Harbor Belt · Belt Railway of Chicago · Elgin, Joliet & Eastern · Chicago & Western Indiana
- Chicago Great Western · Soo Line · Milwaukee Road · Northern Pacific
- Illinois railroads
Sources
- Reynolds, Kirk, and David Oroszi. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Osceola, Wis.: MBI, 2000. La Salle & Chicago 1867; Chicago & Great Western terminal; Villard / Chicago & Northern Pacific; Chicago Terminal Transfer; B&OCT January 6, 1910; mileage, connections, and Barr Yard 1948 capacities
- American-Rails.com, Baltimore & Ohio. Chicago opening November 23, 1874; C&O control February 4, 1963; Chessie System, Inc. parent June 15, 1973; B&O into C&O April 30, 1987
- American-Rails.com, Grand Central Station (Chicago). Beman; December 8, 1890 opening; 1971 demolition
- Komanesky, John. “Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal all-time roster.” The Diesel Shop, revised January 12, 2015. Extra 2200 South, Railroad Magazine, and the Unofficial EMD Homepage. Dedicated SW1 / NW2 / SW9 identities and dispositions
- Unofficial EMD Homepage (TrainWeb / emdloco). Order E462, serials 1601–1606, B&OCT SW1s 216–221, May and August 1942; order E152, serial 653, B&O SW #2, December 1936
- American-Rails.com, B&O diesel roster and EMD SW1. Parent SW #2 / 199 / 8422 as Chicago Terminal; SW1, NW2, and SW9 blocks lettered B&OCT
- American-Rails.com, B&O steam roster (post-1900). Class L 0-8-0s. Richard Leonard, B&OCT 0-8-0 1703 (ex-798, Class L-3) at Grand Central; #1704 ex-799
- Trains / FreightWaves, April 2026. CSX curtailment of Barr Yard switching; remaining locals; work shifted to Belt Railway of Chicago Clearing Yard and Indiana Harbor Belt Blue Island Yard
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