BY DENNIS NEHRENZ/PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR T
HE OLD WESTERN MARYLAND Rail- way was founded to connect the port of Baltimore with Cumber- land and other western markets. A rel- ative latecomer to the railroad scene, the WM built around the established Baltimore & Ohio route that followed the Potomac River. In 1902 financier George Gould acquired control of the Western Maryland in his grand scheme to build a transcontinental railroad. Grain and coal piers were built at Port Covington near Baltimore to serve as the primary east coast port. While en- joying modest success through the wartime years hauling coal, the post- war years were not as kind. By the 1960s, the B&O had acquired a majori- ty stake in the WM. In 1961, the C&O acquired control of the B&O, and the WM reluctantly joined the fold in 1967. Big changes came in 1973 with the formation of Chessie System as a hold-
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ing company for the three railroads. Along with a bright new yellow paint scheme and bold marketing came the abandonment of the west end of the WM from Hancock, Md., to Con- nellsville, Penn. A few years later, WM’s Baltimore terminal at Port Cov- ington was closed in favor of the larger B&O facility nearby. Bit by bit, the old WM was being absorbed into the B&O. I grew up in the Cleveland area, some 300 miles from WM territory. My dad sparked my interest in trains by sharing his Lionel train set with me at an early age. My best friend Thomas Seiler and his dad would take me rail- fanning after church on Sundays and soon the photography bug had bit. I started taking my first train photos with a Kodak Instamatic, and by the time I graduated high school in 1976 I was shooting
slides. Living in the Cleveland area, there was plenty of
railroad action, but the bright and col- orful Chessie System drew the most at- tention from me.
Hanging around the B&O’s Clark Avenue Yard, the visiting WM locomo- tives were a welcome treat to spot in a freight consist. I would take as many photos as possible of the white, red, and black “circus” units as well as the older black-and-yellow locomotives. I was al- ways on the lookout for these unique units as they were quite often leading B&O freights through the area. I’d spot them in Akron, and occasionally on run-through trains connecting to the Norfolk & Western as far west as Brew- ster and Bellevue, Ohio. As the 1970s wore on, however, it was becoming in- creasingly difficult to find vestiges of an independent Western Maryland. I don’t recall all of the exact details, but word trickled back to our group of railfans in December 1978 that the
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