Just east of I-83, five Beltway lanes first bridged over the NC during the mid-1950s upon the opening of the stretch from Joppa Road to Dulaney Valley Road. Light rail's wiring is able to squeeze under the road, and must be carefully negotiated when the steel beams need repainting.

A modification to the I-83 interchange arund 1980 doubled those Beltway lanes to 10, plus 5 lanes of median and shoulder. The 15 total contiguous lanes make for a single 225-foot wide bridge, the widest in the Baltimore-Washington region.

As a challenge, with Google Earth or similar, try to find an even wider contiguous-lanes bridge in one of the east coast states. There aren't many, but by applying logic they can be found fairly easily. Hint: check the New Jersey Turnpike near New York City.

MTA does its best to brighten drab winter scenery. Light rail cars exhibit so many paint schemes and ad wraps that almost every train looks unique.

Various reports have the swerve in the distant track as 1) a concession to local homeowners on the right who wanted less noise from trains, or 2) a move necessitated by utility lines.

It seems unlikely nearby residents can distinugish the resulting reduction in decibels created by the few extra feet, especially over the roar of Beltway traffic at multiple heights, so the demands of utility lines make more sense.

Whatever the cause, the NC's track did not have the same swerve.

Light rail changed out NC's track and signals. That leaves bridges like this one of the few places you can still find NC hardware in use. This is the second crossing of Roland Run, something avoided by the curving original alignment.

The bridge of the prior photo is at the bottom-left corner of this 1915 atlas image. Lutherville Station is near the top.

The WW Boyce coal yard was north of the bridge, served by a short siding that likely stood atop bins into which coal could be dropped. That was one of four tracks here; in addition to the two main tracks, a third track led to Lutherville Station. As railroading declined after World War II, the track count here dwindled to one by 1960. Only light rail's double tracking effort during the 2000s would bring the count back up to two.

The coal yard had been on the left.

This car boasts MDOT on its front, while other light rail cars show MTA. The MTA is a division within MDOT.

You'll need a magnifier to read the rest of the text on the front of this car: The Maryland Department of Transportation Maryland Transit Administration.

Front Avenue, postulated to follow the B&S original alignment, proceeds from the bottom-left corner to meet Seminary Avenue, the light line running from left to right near photo middle.

Lutherville Station is the large building northwest of the tracks near the upper-right corner.

Here MDOT 5033 finishes crossing Seminary Avenue. The conversion of the NC route to light rail involved no new grade separations. So, where there is now a light rail grade crossing, there had been an NC grade crossing, or no crossing at all.

Seminary Avenue gets its name from the Lutherville Female Seminary that was established adjacent in 1852. The seminary, and much of Lutherville, were carved from the Hampton Estate of Charles Ridgely. At its peak, Hampton included some 25,000 acres around what was, in 1790, the largest private home in the United States.

Link: Hampton National Historic Site

It looks like this sign didn't practice what it preaches. The sign leans at a pedestrian crossing from/to College Manor which stands at the site of the Lutherville Female Seminary.

Link: about the seminary

Lutherville outgrew its first trains station, and perhaps even the second station at this site. In 1873 John and Mary Cockey contracted to build the structure seen here and lease it to the NC. The station began serving rail customers in 1876.

Lutherville is considered the USA's first commuter suburb, made possible by B&S and NC train service to/from downtown Baltimore. By the time of this photo, commuters had been boarding trains here for almost a century.

Links: commuter ticket 1894, ~1917, 1976

The structure's gambrel roof was not a common design during the 1870s, and appears to be a choice of practicality to increase the second story's usability. The Cockeys sold the building to the NC in 1886 for $6000; the railroad (NC, PRR, and Conrail) retained it until the year of this photo.

By 1978, the gasoline-powered automobile era was approaching its peak, and the build-out of the US interstate highway system was nearly complete, but the station still stood, kept since then in private hands.

In 2020 a wall separates the old station from the tracks, so this is the best view. Note the locomotive art atop the mailbox.

The original B&S alignment may have passed on this side of the station, then continued northeast along what is now a gravel road.

Link: train 1914

That road leads to this creek, spanned by the now-familiar style of NC stone masonry with light rail modernization on top.

In this reverse view, the line emerges from bucolic Lutherville into a six-mile-long business corridor sandwiched between the railroad and York Road on the east (left in this view).

Light rail farecards are dispensed by machines that accept plastic and cash.

MTA 5050 slows to stop at Lutherville's Light Rail Station. This location is more North Lutherville or even South Timonium.

As if to make up for the prior four-mile gap between stations, the next station is a mere quarter-mile away, the signage of which can be seen near the grade crossing ahead. In its next six track miles from here to the end of the line, light rail will make seven more stops.

Ahead, near Cockeysville, light rail diverges from what had been the NC main line.

On this map light rail's Lutherville Station is near the bottom at Mrs. Talbot's land.

The wiggly line represents the Towson & Cockeysville Electric Railway whose sole reason for existing, as it turned out, was to ferry people between NC and Towson Courthouse between 1912 and 1924. It accomplished that via two battery-powered cars, the newer one of which retired the older which then served as a waiting station. At least the owners did not name their company the Towson & Pacific.

For NC, Timonium marked the peak of the ridge that separates the Jones Falls valley from the Gunpowder River valley. Trains leaving Calvert Station in Baltimore finished an ascent of 360 feet when they reached here, an average grade of about 0.6%.

The busy Timonium Road grade crossing now has specialized warning signage that includes messages meaning (paraphrasing), "The crossing gates have not yet reopened because there is a second light rail train coming soon." I attempted to get photos to show here but the signs flicker so much a camera has trouble imaging them.

NC's Timonium Station had stood on the right, adjacent the Timonium State Fairgrounds.

Link: 2005 Transpo

Light rail's Timonium Station is a short distance north of where the NC's had been and adjacent an entrance to the Maryland State Fairgrounds.

This area's use as a fairgrounds dates to 1879. According to info in Wikipedia, that was one year after a new NC alignment through Lutherville cut through the fairgrounds there. Ironically, NC became the primary way to get to these new fairgrounds, pre-automobile and pre-light rail.

Link: 1879?

"Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Marble Track Bed. Marble blocks from Cockeysville area quarries were used in 1836 to bed the track for this section of the Baltimore and Susquehanna, one of the nation's earliest commercial railroads. Revealed during construction of the MTA light rail, the marble track bed represents an early British experimental railroad technology that was only briefly used in the U.S. The B&S RR opened a corridor between central Pennsylvania and Baltimore, strategically drawing commerce away from Philadelphia. Rail transport helped make Cockeysville marble one of Baltimore County's most important 19th century industrial products."

As seen from Padonia Road, some of those B&S marble blocks were uncovered when light rail excavated in preparation for a second track.

There were, and still are, stone quarries operating in this vicinity.

The blocks were akin to those employed by the B&O as its first track supports, but instead of strap rail the B&S laid T-rail.

Link: 2005

This map from Texas to Ashland covers the remainder of the NC tour. The short track spurs in the Texas vicinity likely served quarries and related businesses.

At the Texas Station Court grade crossing, three lanes worth of ar-ars would make a pirate happy.

Well, yes, it's Maryland, but it's more fun to call it by its local town name of Texas. The ruins of lime kilns (right) were still extant in 2020, but obscured by brush.

This is not a station, at least not yet. For now, trains not heading to the Hunt Valley terminus will layover and turn around here.

Unused stations often conveniently function as movie sets, though to my knowledge this one has not (yet) been used for that purpose.

However, all this reminds me of the following exchange in North by Northwest:
"... and I'm not Mr. Kaplan."
"Of course not. You answer his telephone, you live in his hotel room... and yet you are not Mr. Kaplan."

And, in case you were wondering, Timonium is not an element in the periodic table.

There were more B&S track bed blocks near Industry Lane. They've since been covered over by light rail's second track, for which the grade crossing ahead had been prepared from the start.