We'll tour the branch in milepost order, beginning at Cliffords then heading generally northwest. Note this map is oriented such that North is on the right. North and west view tour photos are forward looking, while south and east ones are reverse to the direction of the tour.

At Cliffords, the SBB is the nearest track which has just split from those adjacent belonging to the Curtis Bay Branch. The ones farther left are part of Baltimore's passenger light rail system.

The SBB is left of and above Baltimore light rail MTA 5007. At one time, B&O shared its route into Baltimore with electric interurban trains, but in 1914 declined continuing that arrangement. B&O then built them a parallel route, the one being negotiated by the light rail car, that curved under its Curtis Bay Branch.

Unseen on the right is a similar, even older (1907) bridge over the Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis (WB&A). The electric train companies struggled to compete, and went through several reorganizations and names such as Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad (B&A), Annapolis and Baltimore Short Line, and Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway.

Change for: WB&A tour at this site

The Baltimore light rail system revived the B&A's old route around 1990 to provide passenger train service between BWI Airport and Baltimore plus many local stops such as this one at Cherry Hill.

With the clutter of utility lines, the SBB is tough to spot paralleling the tallest poles on the right. In the distance, note the stack of Baltimore's waste-to-energy facility operated by Waste Management Resco. It will appear in several photos below.

Change for: Baltimore light rail tour at this site

A 1915 atlas calls this area Minersville, and shows the Westport Paving Brick Company across the tracks. None of the industries along the branch still receive train service. In the past companies such as D.C. Intercel, Danny & Sons, and General Index Manufacturing were railroad customers, but without them the SBB does little more than connect to the Hanover Subdivision (ex Western Maryland).

At Waterview Avenue's complex grade crossing, CSX trains refer to a standard automobile traffic signal, an uncommon arrangement (there's another at Merritt Boulevard in Dundalk). I suspect this signal is tied to the ones seen by motorists, hence the design. Via the control boxes on the right, CSX can manually force the Waterview Avenue auto traffic signal to red.

This is a troubled intersection. The problem is busy four-lane Waterview Avenue is met by both the South Baltimore Branch and light rail, as well as Kloman Street that is squeezed between in a sort of no-mans land.

The meeting of so many routes makes for lots of signals, poles, wires, and signs... plus lots of confusion, so I can't really blame the driver in the animation at left who is emerging from Kloman Street. I suspect this grade crossing witnesses an unusually high number of collisions.

At the grade crossing, one is far more likely to be stopped by a light rail train than CSX, but it does happen.

Branch traffic consists largely of short, mixed-freight. Rolling stock is where you can find decades-old reporting marks. The "Family Lines" name was used from 1972 to 1982 for an amalgamation of railroads, the largest of which were SCL and L&N.

A merger summary that omits many smaller roads:

Atlantic Coast Line + Seaboard Air Line => Seaboard Coast Line
Seaboard Coast Line + Louisville & Nashville => Family Lines => Seaboard System
Baltimore & Ohio + Chesapeake & Ohio + Western Maryland => Chessie System
Chessie System + Seaboard System => CSX

Links: Family Lines, merger chart

BOZ was the reporting mark for B&O's Trailers on Flatcars (TOFC) service. This trailer, with painted Chessie System cat, had sat in the NW corner of the Waterview Avenue intersection but has since been hauled away.

At left, the Baltimore stack towers in the distance, and closer is light rail's Westport station. Due to the 2009 economic downturn, a waterfront housing development has struggled to commence on the right on land formerly occupied by the Carr Lowrey glass factory. Between, an old CPL, one of the last of its species, has eluded capture by hiding on this lesser-used branch.

Links: 2013 Sun article, sales site

And it's no ordinary Color-Position Light signal, it's a 2-lamp restrict-only variety, the only one known in the region even back during CPL heydays.

The faded P sign ("permissive" approach) modifies the signal to allow tonnage (heavy) trains to proceed at restricted speed without first stopping, rule C-295. This combination of restrict-only and P may have been the only one used anywhere on the B&O system.

Different lighting clarifies the B&O P sign has been repurposed into a Chessie APP sign. APP photo from 2010 and courtesy Dave Hiteshew.

Link: 2022

Where Wenburn and Kloman Streets meet, light rail, being lighter, lifts over the heavy rail of the SBB. The East Coast Greenway crosses the SBB here.

Baltimore Gas and Electric's Westport Generating Station, a filming location of the movie 12 Monkeys, had hulked on the right prior to being demolished in 2008. A B&O spur had continued past it to serve the Lauer and Harper Iron Works.

Links: aerial photo, Westport Generating Station, East Coast Greenway, 2019, 2022

In this reverse view, the SBB (left) and ex-Western Maryland (Hanover Subdivision, right) join forces.

Links: 1996, Carr Lowrey glass factory

Prior to 1990, Western Maryland tracks (left) had not curved, but rather continued off photo-edge right to cross the Spring Garden bridge into Port Covington.

The Port's closure stressed jobs and property values adjacent to the tracks, resulting in several abandoned, now-crumbling homes off frame on left.

Link: bridge photos
Change for: Western Maryland tour at this site

Centuries before I-97, Annapolis Road connected Baltimore and the state capital. The nearer grade crossing is that of the ex Western Maryland, the farther belongs to the SBB.

Flashers but no gates guard the SBB at Annapolis Road. MD 295, the B-W Parkway, crosses overhead in the distance, but closer than that you may notice the safety platforms of a railroad bridge.

After crossing Annapolis Road, the SBB crosses the same Gwynn's Falls spanned upstream by the majestic Carrollton Viaduct. The ice-blue color is appropriate since morning temperatures had dipped below zero for the first time in over a decade. For a few decades during the early 20th century, B&O shared this bridge with Annapolis Short Line so the latter could reach Camden Station.

Link: Annapolis Road grade crossing

Frigid weather stops neither real railfans nor switchers 1214 and 1188 from mixed freight.

Unit 1214 is an EMD model MP15T originally built during 1984 for the Seaboard System.

Link: more 1214 pics

Now we're much closer to the "Baltimore" stack; it's located in what had been the outfield of Maryland Baseball Park, home of the Baltimore Black Sox from 1921 to 1932. The mixed freight is approaching from the right.

At our feet are the remains of a Russell Street bypass added while that street was being remolded into MD 295, better known as the B-W Parkway, on the left. The original Russell Street grade crossing was tangent just left of this one, its right edge about where the crossbuck now is. On the 1964 aerial photo at right, X marks the photographer's location.

The photo plane during April 1964 captured the northbound MD 295 bridge near completion while the southbound side is little more that steel framing. Russell Street is rerouted via temporary blacktop around the Monroe Street - MD 295 construction zone. About two decades later, elevated I-95 would be added above that intersection, running west-east, left-right in this view.

Link: Maryland Baseball Park

An old caboose has found a second career as a shoving platform. Shoving platforms are employed when rules require an employee to stand on and monitor a group of cars being moved. B&O favored this bay window design suggesting this unit had once been painted B&O caboose red.

Link: more pics of this caboose

The mixed freight clears MD 295 as its tankers trundle over a disused right of way (next photo). Elevated I-95 is in the distance.

This ramp facilitated construction of the B-W Parkway, MD 295 (unseen on right). At first I thought it followed the old right of way of the Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Railway but instead WB&A had bridged the SBB where southbound MD 295 now does.

Though various WB&A artifacts can be found elsewhere, none survive here. Some WB&A routes were absorbed into the B&A after 1935.

B&A, WB&A's successor, about 1936 connected with the SBB ahead at what was called Carrolls Junction for the trip into Baltimore. Some B&O trains, notably specials to the Army-Navy football game in Annapolis, would ride B&A. Change for: change for start of WB&A tour at this site

A tiny one-lane bridge facilitates maintenance access under I-95.

Shadows hide this uncommon switch position indicator.

The South Baltimore Branch meets here what had been the Camden Cutoff, now the main line of CSX's Baltimore Terminal Subdivision. The center of Baltimore city is less than 2 miles ahead.

In the past, this was known as Carroll Interlocking, the home of CX Tower. The many CPL signals that had stood in this vicinity are now gone. The extra width here reveals the WB&A had previously parallelled on the right on partially elevated trackage.

Links: ~1950, CX Tower and CPLs

Within the shadow of the Monroe Street bridge, one can turn to look the reverse direction and find I-95 nearby plus Zepp's Bridge distant where it marks the Curtis Bay Branch's start/end. The tracks curving on the right began life as the Locust Point Branch, but are now part of the Mt. Clare Branch.

Link: 1978