Canton Railroad Transfer Bridge

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The sepia-toned Canton railroad transfer bridge rises out of the harbor near the Canton Waterfront Park like an industrial Arc de Triomphe. It is one of three such structures—remnants of an early chapter in Baltimore’s industrial maritime and railroad histories—that remain in the city (the other two transfer bridges are in Locust Point and can only be seen from the water.).

Built sometime in the 1910s for the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington Railroad (which, in 1902, had merged with the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad), the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands 38 feet high, 53 feet wide, and 14 feet deep. This steel bridge allowed for the transport of railroad cars across the harbor on “carfloats” between Canton, Locust Point, and the Inner Harbor.

After the formation of the Canton Company of Baltimore in 1828, the company purchased 3,000 acres of the O’Donnell estate to build houses, iron works, and railroads. Along the waterfront, the company leased out property for breweries, canneries, shipbuilders, and other industrial concerns. The area that is now the Canton Waterfront Park was leased to the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad as a railyard, a place for trains to unload their goods and take on new cargo. Because Baltimore prohibited locomotives from passing through downtown, trains would stop on the outskirts of the city, where the train cars would be uncoupled and hitched up to horses who would pull the cars through town one at a time. This process was slow and expensive. A quicker solution for transferring train cargo was transporting railcars across the harbor via the railroad transfer bridge.

Harbor tides prevented barges from pulling up directly to the pier because the water levels could change dramatically. The railroad transfer bridge worked akin to a gangplank on a ferry and served as the intermediary between shore and barge. Railroad cars were rolled onto the transfer bridge and then onto a barge fitted with railroad tracks, decoupled, and floated across the harbor to Locust Point where the cargo was unloaded. Oftentimes, the process was reversed, so the rail cars could rejoin their engines.

Although no longer in use, the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands as a testament to innovation in engineering and Baltimore’s industrial heritage.