City faces next step in fixing East 26th Street

Officials can’t say how long repairs to wall will take

After a night of excavation and clearing out crumbled pieces of sidewalk and other debris, it was clear Tuesday that a section of the retaining wall holding East 26th Street in Baltimore above a cut of railroad tracks was failing.

It hadn’t collapsed fully, and there was no massive landslide of mud and cars onto the CSX Transportation line below, as happened on the street in 2014. In fact, trains were running Tuesday morning along the route, which connects the busy port of Baltimore to points west.

But along half the block between North Calvert Street and Guilford Avenue in Charles Village, the wall had cracked and shifted, leaning away from the street and toward the tracks. Workers had cleared out a big trench of earth behind it, and could be overheard discussing when and how to remove the damaged wall.

The work followed a sinking of the sidewalk along the street and atop the retaining wall that began accelerating Monday morning and captured the attention of city officials.

German Vigil, a spokesman for the