Map of the Western Maryland Railway

It began as a humble farmers’ railroad in the mid-nineteenth century, but grew into an 857-mile system and a major trunk line for east-west railroad freight movement. In addition, the homegrown Western Maryland became Baltimore’s second-favorite railroad, next to the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O).

The modest enterprise was born in May 1852, when Baltimoreans and Carroll County farmers incorporated the Baltimore, Carroll & Frederick Rail Road to tap the county’s agriculture and eventually reach Hagerstown. Bypassed by the B&O, Hagerstown was shipping most of its trade north into Pennsylvania over the Cumberland Valley Railroad, rather than to Baltimore. Less than a year later, to reflect its desire to serve the Hagerstown market, the company changed its name to the Western Maryland Rail Road.

Financial difficulties pushed construction off until 1857, with the new Western Maryland reaching Owings Mills in 1859 (originally over a Northern Central Railway branch), Westminster in 1861, and Union Bridge in 1863. In that form, it briefly served as a railhead during the Battle of Gettysburg. More struggles took the railroad over the Blue Ridge into Hagerstown in 1872 and, in the next year, to a coal transfer terminal with the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal (C&O) at Williamsport.

The dynamic John Mifflin Hood brought the bucolic railroad to life and extended it in two directions--first northeast from Hagerstown to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania (in 1881), where it joined a branch of the Philadelphia & Reading, and then west (in 1892) from Williamsport to a Baltimore & Ohio connection at Cherry Run, West Virginia. Neither spot was important itself, but the extensions made the Western Maryland a strategic middleman for freight moving between the Midwest and the Philadelphia-New York area. In between, Hood also picked up a line running through Hanover and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania--part of which had carried Lincoln to the battlefield.

An even greater growth spurt came in the early twentieth century, thanks to George Gould, son of the notorious Jay Gould. George Gould was patching together a coast-to-coast railroad empire, and, in 1902, he picked up the Western Maryland as his eastern terminal. His problem was that his line from the west terminated at Pittsburgh, with no friendly connection between the two.

Gould’s first step was a westward line from Big Pool to Cumberland, Maryland, completed in 1906. Four years earlier, the Fuller Syndicate (another Gould operation) had also bought the West Virginia Central & Pittsburgh Railway, which reached south from Cumberland into rich West Virginia lumber and coal mining country. This company merged into the Western Maryland in 1905, providing a bountiful new source of traffic.

Gould next planned to build west over the Alleghenies to Connellsville, Pennsylvania, where he would meet his line from Pittsburgh and complete his coast-to-coast railroad. But financial trouble forced Gould to sell the Western Maryland before achieving his goal. Nonetheless, the Western Maryland’s new owners carried out the plan, completing the Connellsville extension in 1912, giving it direct access to the western markets. By the 1930s, it was part of an important Midwest-East Coast fast freight route, giving the neighboring B&O a run for its money. Actually, the B&O had bought control of the Western Maryland in 1927 but, because of antitrust complaints, its stock was put into trusteeship, leaving the smaller company still fiercely independent.

And so the Western Maryland’s independence remained, until the transportation environment changed in the 1960s. By then, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway had bought the Baltimore & Ohio, and surrounding railroads were merging into ever larger entities. Reflecting this newly competitive world, C&O-B&O finally received government permission to directly control the Western Maryland in 1967. Afterwards, it was downhill for a proud railroad.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) granted the Western Maryland Railway permission to abandon 125 miles of the main line between Hancock and Connellsville by 1975. Thus, the entire main line from Big Pool to Cumberland and Connellsville was dismantled because it closely paralleled the B&O. Also abandoned was much West Virginia trackage, with the center section of the original main line between Baltimore and Hagerstown sold to an independent operator. The final blow came in 1983, when the B&O took over operation of all remaining Western Maryland tracks. The company itself remained as a legal shell until merged into CSX Transportation in 1987.

Williams, Harold A. The Western Maryland Railway Story. Baltimore: The Western Maryland Ry. Co., 1952.

Cook, Roger and Karl Zimmerman. The Western Maryland Railway: Fireballs and Black Diamonds. San Diego: Howell-North Books, 1981. Reprint, Laury’s Station, Pa.: Garrigues House Publishers, 1992.