The Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad and the North German Lloyd (Norddeutscher Lloyd) Company signed an agreement in 1867. B&O would build an immigration pier and connect it to its rail network. North German Lloyd (based in Bremen, Germany) would send at least one immigrant ship per month to Baltimore.
B&O advertised special immigrant fares in European countries. The fare would include steamship passage to America and train fare to one of the western states.
B&O extended their railroad tracks up to the pier for travelers who purchased a combination ship and rail passage ticket. Immigrants arriving at Locust Point often boarded trains inside the pier sheds, immediately heading west.
From 1868 thru 1914 over 1.2 million immigrants landed at the pier, making Baltimore the third largest port of entry in the U.S. at the time, following New York and Boston. Most of the earliest immigrants arrived on ships which departed from Germany. From deep within Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, it was a long train ride to a German port.
“The Great Wave of Immigration” from Europe ended in Baltimore with the outbreak of the first World War. Locust Point immigration pier closed in 1914.
Sources: How Baltimore Became the New York of the South by Ron Cassie, 2016; accessed at https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1040742/Cassie_georgetown_0076M_13243.pdf?sequence=1 and Baltimore Immigration Museum, Immigration History; accessed at http://www.immigrationbaltimore.org and Brigitte V. Fessenden, “Locust Point Immigrant House,” Explore Baltimore Heritage; accessed at https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/559 and Baltimore Harbor: a Pictorial History, 3rd ed., by Robert C. Keith, 2005, pages 89,
