About 25 feet above a Beaverdam Run tributary, this NC stone arch bridge stands adjacent Warren Road.

The tall arch exhibits more modern masonry than the B&S would have employed, so it likely dates to NC of the 1870s. Even more modern is the light rail car ad-wrapped for the Baltimore Ravens.

Just north of Warren Road, light rail veers to the west to follow an NC / Pennsylvania RR industrial spur built during the late 1960s. The NC main line continued straight (north). What's left of it rarely sees trains any longer such that about a quarter mile in the distance it becomes overgrown by brush.

Link: 2004 with NS

During NC heydays, there was no grade crossing here -- because Warren Road didn't exist here until the 1990s. The flat area of darker pavement in the foreground looks very much like a former grade crossing, except no map or aerial shows rails there.

After bending west, light rail turns north to wander through several office parks via single track. Rather than gates at the entrance road of every building, special warning signs alert turning automobiles to a train in the vicinity, as seen here along Gilroy Road. These signs flicker at a rate that can be imaged by camera, perhaps intentionally so they are also visible via automobile backup cameras.

The Baltimore and Susquehanna began service to Cockeysville in 1838 where it crossed busy York Road, then the primary route connecting Baltimore, Maryland with York, Pennsylvania.

During the 1800s, NC built an industrial spur west to stone quarries. The spur became part of a wye inside of which NC erected a Freight Station that, as of 2021, still stands. The building west of the freight station handled agricultural products.

After World War II, much of the land near NC was transformed from farms and quarries into industrial and commercial uses.

Labels on the map identify items that will be seen in photos below.

In their final configuration, three tracks approached Cockeysville Road, with the center track ending at the Hayes bumper that remains in place.

One rail segment shows a November 1929 forging date.

Generating business for local body shops is this Durable brand bumping post adjacent automobile parking. Y2K must have been particularly rough on Durable since they were in the habit of using two digits to represent the year. In 1920, "20" was sufficient to indicate the year because there had been no railroading in 1820.

At photo top is the Freight Station.

Wye tracks remain embedded in the pavement, with the spur on the left leading to "Creek Bridge" on the aerial photo. That bridge is no longer extant, but its concrete supports remain as seen in the photo at left. Note the rail segment below and right of the blue pickup. An 1877 atlas shows the spur serving Sherwood Park Marble Works and Beaverdam Marble Works.

The wye became a convenient place to turn local passenger trains headed back toward Baltimore.

Link: ~1900

The Freight Station dates to the 1890s. It was not built by NC but rather for Joshua Cockey III. This station, separate from the passenger station, facilitated shipment of marble and other quarried stone without inconveniencing passengers with dirt and dust. Cockey sold the building to NC in 1902.

The passenger station had been located near the brick building at distant left, the 2020 home of Kelly's Body Shop. Between here and there lies York Road.

Links: ~1965, MHT info (pdf)

When horses with buggies were the primary traffic on York Road, the grade crossing was not yet overcrowded. That's NC's Cockeysville tower, or cabin as the PRR preferred to call it, on the left. The passenger station is the closest frame structure on the right (east) side of York Road.

Due to proximity to York Road, Cockeysville became an important stop for the railroad. Crew changes and communications were handled here, and for a time the station served as the town's post office.

Links: source photo, 1898, 1900, Stop Look Listen sign at right

As buggies gave way to automobiles during the 1920s, the scene became more crowded. Note the position-light signal at right, a design that displaced semaphores.

Links: ~1900, ~1900, 1903

Here's a modern view at roughly the same location. The Railroad Crossing advertising tower stands in for NC's tower, though not exactly at the same spot: the real railroad tower had stood nearer the center of this photo.

The main line tracks had curved near the pedestrian and fire hydrant that are adjacent York Road.

With automobile traffic on the rise during the 1920s, the grade crossing at York Road became problematic, and so in 1931 grade separation was achieved via the construction of an underpass.

The underpass was not without its own problems, one of which was its tendency to flood during relatively minor rainstorms.

Just one lane each way for a busy York Road meant the underpass was also a traffic bottleneck. Train usage ended in 1972 due to a storm named Agnes, paving the way (no pun intended) for the removal of the underpass during the early 1990s.

Links: source photo at Todd's site. 1992, 1992, 1992

If not for a few modern elements, such as the radio antenna, this photo might seem to be of an abandoned station circa 1900. At photo time, the passenger Cockeysville Station looked quite tired. It was demolished during June 1974.

Links: ~1970, 1974

This is roughly the same view as the prior, some fifty years later. The rightmost utility pole remains the same, as does the building behind it. Kelly's Body Shop is slightly north of the station, so it only partially occupies the station site.

Link: 1974

You don't have to go far to find surviving rails. In this reverse view, that's Kelly's on the right.

Link: Todd's site

Here's another pair of 1938 - 1952 aerial photos to illustrate the next part of the tour.

As land use transitioned away from farming, more trees filled in.

The filling-in continues, but now it often involves invasive species like kudzu, bamboo, and stilt grass taking over. Some places I visited just 20 years ago are now impassable without machete.

Much of this stone arch is obscured by overgrowth and silt. This one is likely of NC construction during the 1870s.

Rails are perched above drop bins for Sherwood Distillery that had occupied the tongue of land between here and York Road.

The former right-of-way's grading here suggests it was raised from a prior lower elevation.

Streamside stones like these often were part of a masonry railroad bridge, but these serve a different purpose. Topo maps suggest Beaverdam Run once flowed a bit west of its present route here, at a spot NC wanted a bridge. Rather than deal with erosion issues, I speculate NC rerouted the stream, and dammed its natural route with these stones to discourage the stream from resuming it, then built a bridge above.

Trains had negotiated the break in trees at upper left. Multiple generations of bridges likely spanned here; the last one of steel was high above the stream. It was removed during the mid 1980s.

The NC bridge at Western Run, however, remains. Some maps say it now belongs to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, others to the Maryland Department of Transportation.

Downstream the Western Run bridge is another set of low stones that are where topo maps suggest Beaverdam Run had originally flowed into Western Run.

The somewhat-redundantly-named Ashland Furnace was a substantial iron mill. Starting during the 1840s, it evolved from a local mill into a company town.

The Bessemer process invented during 1850s was most efficient at the large scale, so smaller operations like Ashland were gradually phased out. Ashland made its last metal during the 1880s.

Link: 1871

Those appear to be railcars across the middle of this grainy photo. When Ashland was a major NC customer, several sidings had wandered through the grounds.

Links: ~1870, ~1930

Northeast of Ashland, a rails-to-trails effort has opened NC's former route to hikers and bikers. It's commonly called the NCR trail. The trail begins at the brown sign in the distance.

Flooding from tropical system Agnes during June 1972 damaged the line beyond what an already-struggling Penn Central (PC) deemed worth repairing. After that event, no train again reached Cockeysville from the north. The customers that remained were instead served by trains from Baltimore that worked their way up the Jones Falls valley. Control of the B&S/NC line then passed from PC to Conrail, and next to Norfolk Southern (NS). The last NS freight worked the line during 2005 shortly before light rail was double tracked.

Though the freights have stopped (for now), passengers can ride light rail to enjoy the benefits of this rail route, one of the oldest in world.