On April 26, 1863, a detachment of Confederate Capt. John H. McNeill’s partisan rangers attacked the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad facilities at Altamont as part of a larger group that entered Oakland while Confederate Gen. William E. “Grumble” Jones led an incursion into West Virginia and Maryland to hamper the rail movements of Federal troops and supplies. Capt. Edward H. McDonald led the detachment into Altamont to destroy the facilities there. The rangers first cut the telegraph wires so other stations on the line could not be warned, then destroyed the switching machinery and the switches in the track, since Altamont was a switching area for helper engines used on the 17-Mile Grade. They also captured a locomotive at the top of the grade. A soldier climbed into the cab and opened the throttle, intending to reverse it downgrade and either wreck it on a curve or crash it into an approaching train, but the engine ran forward rather than backward and headed toward Oakland. It would have wrecked at the burned bridge west of Oakland, which another detachment of rangers had burned that morning, but it ran out of steam first.