From Richard Flint

This slow exposure (read blurry train) taken after sunset shows a pair of Norfolk Southern EMD engines pulling the red show train as it moved last Monday (14) from Greensboro, NC, to Philadelphia. The Ringling-Barnum circus train, in almost continuous use since 1872, is crossing the oldest railroad bridge in the world still in use. Construction on the Baltimore & Ohio’s “Thomas Viaduct,” then named for the railroad’s president, began July 4, 1833, and was completed exactly two years later. For much of its life, it was the only rail line entering the nation’s capitol from Baltimore and consequently during the Civil War was heavily guarded. The main design problem was constructing such a large bridge on a curve and it became the first multiple arched stone railroad bridge in the world so built. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II, son of the architect of the U.S. Capitol, solved the problem and today it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as a Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The 612-foot viaduct, with eight arches of roughly 58 feet each over the Patapsco River valley just south of Baltimore, is now owned by CSX and though carrying considerably more weight than its first train in 1835, remains solid and unaltered to this day. Dick Flint Baltimore