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Hagerstown Museum, Hagerstown Railroad Park and more 8/4/2018

I lost the pictures of the New Jersey part of this trip so we will pick up here. They are some place in my laptop but we have spent hours trying to find them so those two stories may have to wait until I return home and get some help to find them because I cannot locate them. So we woke up at the Days Inn and had the hotel's continental breakfast before we took off, with the first stop being the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum.

The museum is located at 300 South Burhans Boulevard and has exhibits relating to local railroad history and model railroads. The Hagerstown Roundhouse Complex was built in 1939. The 25 stall roundhouse and shops were the major facility for maintenance and repairs of locomotives and cars in Western Maryland. The railroads were the largest employers in Washington County for more than 50 years. The Roundhouse facility was demolished on March 13, 1999.

We arrived here and it looked like more of a CSX yard than a museum. The proof will be in the first few pictures.

CSX engines abound in Hagerstown.

Hagerstown and Frederick Transit interurban 168, built by J.G. Brill in 1914. It operated until 1947 and was the last trolley to run in Washington County. It was moved to Dam 5 for use as a cabin then donated to Hagerstown Model Club and moved to a fairground until being donated to the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum in the 1980's.

CSX ES44AH 822.

Western Maryland VO-1000 DS-5 132 built by Baldwin in 1944.

Western Maryland caboose 1863 built by the railroad in 1940.

Western Maryland caboose 1859 built by the railroad in 1940.

Reading caboose 94020 built by Internaional Car in 1944.

Baltimore & Ohio "wagon top" caboose C2490 built by the railroad in 1941.

Chesapeake and Ohio diner-coach-lounge 714 "The Derby Club" built by Pressed Steel in 1923 and rebuilt from a coach.

Pennsylvania Railroad Railway Express Agency baggage car 9006 built by St. Louis Car Company in 1929.

Amtrak coach 9995, nee Santa Fe baggage-dormitory-coach 3482 built by Pullman-Standard in 1940.

Lone Star Cement 45 ton switcher built by General Electric.

Pullman kitchen car K3008 sold to Western Maryland after World War II as a maintenance-of-way car.

Museum scene.

Roundhouse museum scene.

Flat car with farm implement on it.

United States Army troop sleeper 9499, ex. New York Central 9499, nee United States Army 9499 built by Pullman Company in 1943.

From here we drove the short distance over to City Park, our next destination.

Located in City Park, the Hagerstown Railroad Museum features hundreds of signs, signals, bells, telephones and tools that were used by railroad workers throughout history. Most of the items in this significant collection came from the Western Maryland Railroad Company. Of special interest are an 1885 Pump Car and an 1875 Velocipede; both vehicles transported workers to rails or rail cars to make repairs.

The crown jewel of the museum is Steam Engine 202. This Locomotive was built in 1912 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works and it carried passengers and baggage between Baltimore and Hagerstown. It was retired in 1953. Totaling 77 feet in length, the engine weighs 415,000 pounds. Steam Engine 202 is the only Western Maryland road-type steam locomotive in existence.

In addition to the locomotive and its coal tender, eight cabooses are also on display.

To our dismay, we found all the gates locked so we would have to another version of the Crewe Railroad Park with nobody here so we all resorted to shooting our pictures through the fence. Not the best solution but one that would work.

The sign says it all.

Western Maryland 4-6-2 202 built by Baldwin in 1912 on display at City Park in Hagerstown.

Western Maryland caboose 1885 built by the railroad in 1940.

Another view of Maryland 4-6-2 202 showing the drivers.

Two cabooses on display one being Chesepeake and Ohio caboose 3549 built in 1969 by Chesepeake and Ohio.

The station on the property at City Park.

Park view.

Geese in the rain water puddle.

Museum view.

Billboard caboose for Hagerstown Railroad Park. Bob and his rental car left us here and he headed for Balitmore where he would return the rental car then take the light rail to Penn Station and walk to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum where we would meet him later in the day. From here, we drove back to Dual Highway and gassed up the rental car which would be the only time on this trip. We drove almost to Frederick before we turned south and followed excellent directions to Point of the Rocks, which was our next destination of the day. We just missed an eastbound CSX train when we arrived.

Point of Rocks is a historic passenger rail station on the MARC Brunswick Line between Washington, D.C., and Martinsburg, West Virginia, located at Point of Rocks in Frederick County. The station was built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1873 and designed by E. Francis Baldwin. It is situated at the junction of the B&O Old Main Line (running to Baltimore) and the Metropolitan Branch (running to Washington, D.C.). The Met Branch also opened in 1873 and became the principal route for passenger trains between Baltimore, Washington and points west.

The main station building is a 2 1/2-story, triangular Gothic Revival with a four-story tower and a 1 1/2-story wing at the base. The tower has a pyramidal roof containing a dormer on each side. On top is a square cupola supporting a pyramidal peaked roof.

The station building itself is not open to the public and is used by CSX as storage and offices for maintenance of way crews. In 2008, new platforms and platform shelters were built for MARC commuters traveling east towards Washington DC, replacing older bus shelter-style structures which were erected in the mid 1990's.

During the blizzard of 2010, the south side awning on the main building collapsed under the weight of record snow fall, and was later removed, leaving half the building missing cover. In January 2011, work to rebuild the destroyed part of the structure began.

The Point of Rocks Railroad Station was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and reopened for the Maryland Rail Commuter Service, now called MARC, which established the Brunswick Line.

The Baltimore and Ohio Point of Rocks station.

The old main line looking toward Harpers Ferry.

More views of the Point of Rocks station. From here we drove the short distance to the C&O Canal.

Views of the old C&O canal which operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Potomac Canal, which shut down completely in 1828, and could operate during months in which the water level was too low for the former canal. The canal's principal cargo was coal from the Allegheny Mountains. Construction on the 184.5-mile canal began in 1828 and ended in 1850 with the completion of a 50-mile stretch to Cumberland, although the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had already reached Cumberland in 1842. Rising and falling over an elevation change of 605 feet, it required the construction of 74 canal locks, 11 aqueducts to cross major streams, more than 240 culverts to cross smaller streams and the 3,118 ft Paw Paw Tunnel. A planned section to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh was never built. The canalway is now maintained as the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, with a trail that follows the old towpath. We stopped to look at the signage and maps here.

Map of the canal and history plaque.

From here we drove to Walkersville and had plenty of time before the 11:00 train departed.

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