York PA WM Freight Station

[wm3798]

You could take over the old east branch of the PRR from Harrington down the east coast by way of Indian River (a coal burning power plant that still gets trains in regularly!) to Berlin, and Franklin City on the coast.  It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine a connection across the sandbar to Cape Charles to the Delmarva Railroad's port.  Going north, you have the main stem of the Delmarva Division, which you could negotiate for trackage rights, have a division yard at Newark Delaware, and then trackage rights over the CSX Royal Blue line down to Perryville to connect with the Port Road.  (You could run electrics there!)  Then you're on up to the crossing at Columbia, which would branch toward York to the west, and Harrisburg/Enola to the north.

So there you have it!  All figured out.  Delmarva will provide lots of agricultural traffic, especially chicken feed inbound in the winter, and soybeans and corn outbound in the fall.  Inbound you'd have coal for Indian River, and stone to a big terminal above Harrington (there are no rocks on the eastern shore, unless you bring them with you!)

I'd love to see your paint scheme.  I developed a similar concept for our club layout at Delmar, but it was nixed by the old-timers who just wanted to run circles.  I called it the Delmarva Central, using a B&O blue and yellow color scheme with DC in the mating worms style of the Penn Central.  It was pretty cool.  I may do an engine in that scheme just because I liked it.

Lee

[sirenwerks]

Hmmmm... the Royal Blue line... OK, this is completely stream on conscientiousness writing, but hear me out and let me know where this idea fails... The fictitious history of the Penmarva is patterned after the Wisconsin Central, another road I admire. The PMVX pieced together abandoned lines like the WC and took over floundering one-loco shortlines. The abandoned lines came together as Conrail sloughed off lines, and then CSX and NS did too.

The PMVX's Peninsula Div. is a purely fictitous line developed as a then-contemporary competitor to Cassatt's eventual PRR line in Delaware. We'll call it Line X. Line X's trackage was built in Maryland, helped by Maryland interests, circumventing any trackage in the State of Delaware and serving Maryland Eastern Shore communities more directly, rather than by Cassatt's long branches. Hence, Line X crossed Cassatt's line's branches in a number of places. Line X ran south from Elkton to Cecilton and through Centreville, Easton, and on to Cambridge. At Cambridge it doglegs east to Salisbury, and then resumes southern travel to Princess Anne (where I envision a branch that ran to Crisfield wying off) and on to Pocomoke City. Let's , and it became a shared line. Here, I am torn between changing history and having Line X beat Cassat to P City and on to Cape Charles or allowing it to run its normal course. Either way, I could allow the real Eastern Shore shortline to continue as a connecting road, or trump it and have the Penmarva run all the way to Cape Charles.

To return to the history... Line X came into family ownership and dwindled just before WWII, but was somehow kept largely intact until the 80s, when the Penmarva came into existence. I think the PMVX was started by a former Southern executive (a history patterned after the WC, and MMA) who aggressively returned the line to operating status, in large part through State subsidy while Conrail suffered a long and bitter localized strike on their Delaware line in the mid-80s. Using his industry connections, heavy investors,  tax breaks, and the cheap land prices on the Eastern Shore at the time, PMVX's small staff managed to work with MD and county executives to attract new rail-served industries to the region, reactivate a number of former rail-served businesses, and initiate rail-to-truck transfer services to enlarge the then-shortline's service footprint even more, before the CR strike ended. This allowed the Penmarva to gain market advantage on the Delmarva, and set precedent for future growth.

Rewind back to Cassatt's lifetime again for the development of the PMVX's Central Div., running from Elkton to York and branching to Harrisburg. It gets a bit more creative but no less fictitious. I surmise that the pre-Ma & Pa Baltimore & Lehigh concerns managed to actually bridge the Susquehanna on a highline bridge from the Maryland side, over the existing rail line on the river's north shore (now the NS line to Harrisburg). Construction was completed on the bridge before the necessary lands had been acquired by the northern side's concerns. In panic, the northern side's concerns sought an easier to acquire a route for its existing line, which had been built north to Harrisburg, and ended up connecting with the B&O's Royal Blue Line just north of North East Maryland. With the B&L-intended line effectively severed, the bridge remained unused after a short-lived connection with the north shore's line at Port Deposit was abandoned.

The bridge's excellent construction allowed it to survive the likes of hurricane Agnes and, fast to forward to the early 90s, Conrail's being gobbled up by CSX and NS allowed the Penmarva to negotiate trackage rights over CSX to North East where it branched off to Harrisburg and continuing on to a connection with NS's Port Road at Perryville. It then continued on NS trackage and exited at Port Deposit onto the formerly abandoned bridge line, followed the restored line to the failed Ma & Pa, now part of PMVX's growing empire, and ran through Red Lion to York.

Furthermore (yes, on to York)... York Rail was not purchased by the Genessee & Wyoming. It became part of the Penmarva allowing the line direct access to former WM trackage to Gettysburg etc. and for me to model the Glatfelter mill (in MY world, NS GE units do NOT even get close to Spring Grove), yadee, yaddee, yaddee... development of the Central Div. further west into Pennsylvania, and the Penmarva's Southern Div. - picking up somewhere around Westminster or Hagerstown and running to Richmond - will have to wait for later.

For now, let's just say that there may or may not be a Baltimore connection via the old Ma & Pa line through Towson to the Fallsway and, until I can figure out a successfully realistic manner of bridging York and Harrisburg directly, that traffic moves south from Harrisburg (Penn's Cap on the PMV map) to the PMVX's main northern yard at Elkton (PMV's Port Cardinal Yard) and is exchanged for indirect points north and south with CSX at North East or the NS at Perryville.

My back hurts from shoveling ice and the cats won't stay off my lap at this point, making it hard to type anymore... Critique please Lee? Ed K., if you're reading, how about some feedback?

[wm3798]

Okay, on the Eastern Shore, all you have to do is get to Queenstown, just east of Kent Island (That's where the outlet mall is).  From there, you have a straight shot to Salisbury via the old Baltimore Chesapeake and Atlantic.  It started at Love Point on Kent Island, where a steamboat line made the connection to B-town into the late 1930's, and went through Stevensville, Queenstown, Easton, Preston, Hurlock (Jct. PRR Cambridge Branch), Vienna, Mardela, Hebron, Salisbury and on to Berlin and Ocean City.  The bridge into O.C. was wiped out in the 1933 hurricane, and the new federal standards for railroad bridges over navigable water in the 1930's led the PRR (which controlled it) to abandon the chunks that involved bridges over the major rivers.  By 1941 it was a dotted line, with segments serving Easton from the PRR Oxford Branch, Hurlock to Preston, (the right of way is still intact from Hurlock to Vienna and is owned by Delmarva Power in case they want to convert the Vienna power plant back to coal) and a longer segment from Salisbury harbor east to about the Salisbury Bypass.

There was a Maryland-based rail line started in the Salisbury area.  As you head toward Salisbury on US 50, you cross a road called "Old Railroad Road."  It is built on the surviving grade of the line.  To the best of my knowledge, it was graded, but the rail was never laid.

Cambridge is going to have to stay at the end of a branch.  Geographically, you really can't make a direct rail connection because the Choptank is 2.5 miles wide at Cambridge.  If you use the BC&A through Hurlock, you have a junction already in place, and Cambridge is about 10 miles away by rail.

Your theory about the B&L bridge over the Susquehanna is a real stretch.  It is unlikely that investors would buy into building a bridge if the land on either side was not locked in.  It's also unlikely that had a bridge been built, say, before the B&O made it across, that the B&L would have had such bad fortune.  Better re-think that part.

You also have to think about what traffic kind of traffic and how much would be generated between the points you have chosen, and decide if there's enough business to compete with NS, at least on the south end.  To me a more plausible scenario would be to just pick up the existing infrastructure assuming that Conrail decided in 1976 that it didn't want to go to the beach.

I always thought a foreign auto plant would do well as a traffic generator around here.  You know, a stray Toyota or Mercedes plant.  With rail access and a reasonable proximity to the Northeast, plus a deep water port at Cambridge, it could be a center piece of your layout concept.  Totally fictitious, of course, but plausible.

It's fun to kick these ideas around.  Makes you want to be the economic development director of your county!!

Lee

[RockGp40]

I like this hypothetical railroad. Is there a possibility of an ethanol plant being built along the PMVX?  And can/will there be an interchange with the MD & DE?

Lee, maybe you can answer this question. In reality, is there enough corn production on the eastern shore to warrant a real ethanol facility?

Brian

[wm3798]

I'm not sure what ethanol requires in terms of production per acre.  As a theoretical industry on a model railroad using Delmarva as a setting, I say go for it!  You could generate a lot of energy with all the corn and chicken S**T we have over here!!

Lee

[keystonecrossings]

Lee speaks of the PRR-controlled line up to Love Point on Kent Island. Below is the 1941 division map of the PRR's Delmarva division, which shows this line.

From @ 1975-78 my parents had a boat on the Chesapeake Bay. We kept it on Kent Island, at Castle Marina, which was on the northeast side of the island. At the time I had seen the former right-of-way and had no idea what it was, where it went, or its role in the rail world. Also worth noting that a lot of marinas used old wood barges as breakwaters protecting their entrances. They were really broken down by the 70s, but I wonder if any of them were former railroad car floats.

Here's that map...



My web site offers division maps from the late 1920s as well as some well after the 1941 version.

[sirenwerks]

I definitely admit the Susquehanna crossing's a stretch, as well as the route to Harrisburg, The PRR just had things too tied up. Does anyone know what the present day status is of the line from Landesburg to Parkesburg is in PA? Maybe the PMVX should reach further north, rather than jut west from Elkton. I did like the idea of the Ma & Pa revival, but that line would also take some serious straightening t make it commercially plausible.

An auto subassembly plant was definitely on the list. I was thinking Audi or VW (hey, I drive a Jetta) or something like an Allison transmission factory. I was also playing with the idea of a CAT assembly plant. That would make for interesting flatcar traffic in and out, and I am pretty sure they do their own large scale casting so some metal movements (mostly scrap) would be involved. This would provide some lumber and plastics traffic. Some other ideas, aside from the coal power plant, are woodchip transfer (I saw a chipper facility not too long while on a drive from Chestertown to Richmond via Norfolk) which could shuttle from the peninsula to Glatfelters in York, sand heading out of the Salisbury area, a barge manufacturing yard (more metal movements, plus I found some drawings of such an industry located on the Monongahela which is not the conventional shipyard), a Knoll (high-end office furniture) plant and warehouse to serve Philly/Balto/DC, and and Akzo Nobel coatings facility.

I need to give more thought to the Bay to York stretch though, maybe Harrisburg won't work at all. York has enough going on, plus I am more interested in some of the industry in Lancaster than H-burg, and those can more easily be transplanted further south. I think this weekend will require a jaunt over the Bay bridge for inspiration and to feel out the possibilities, maybe get down to Cape Charles and photograph that cement casting facility and all those KRL flats down there.

[3rdrail]

Note that the Baltimore & Eastern still shows separately operated in that 1941 map, although broken into pieces. I never did explore just what the deal was, but several employees in Baltimore, including a trace clerk with a law degree, Freddie Kreymeier, were not PRR employees, but were paid by the B&E,up until the PRR-NYC merger. The B&E originally had two lines, from Love Point to Rehoboth (note a little piece became PRR between Ellendale and Milton) as well as from Claiborne to Ocean City.

[John]

I know in Md at least, the state legislature passed a law that prevented the PRR from reaching DC, except from a connection to a branch line .. or something like that .. I will have to research it ..

[keystonecrossings]

I know in Md at least, the state legislature passed a law that prevented the PRR from reaching DC, except from a connection to a branch line .. or something like that .. I will have to research it ..

What happened was that the PRR wanted to get into DC. The legislature would never let that happen, in order to protect the hometown B&O. But to make their disapproval appear more legit on the surface, they said that a branch line could reach to DC.

So the PRR submitted a proposal to build a main line from Baltimore to Pope's Creek. Internally, it was their absolute intention to use this to get to DC. The route was approved. As it was built, it purposely swayed close to DC. As the line began to pass DC, they immediately started work on the branch into DC.

IIRC, the branch was completed very quickly and the "main line" to Pope's Creek took some time to actually finish. In truth, it was the branch line!

[sirenwerks]

Brian,

You live in Annapolis? I work right on State Circle. Small world.

[wm3798]

The PRR wanted to build the Pope's Creek line, and the legislature let them, with the caveat that there would be no branch lines in excess of 10 miles in length.  The junction of the NEC and the Pope's creek line was not located there by accident...

On the Eastern Shore, the B&E was set up as a paper company controlled by the PRR to purchase the assets of the BC&A, which entered insolvency as a result of the 1933 storm.  Apparently the ICC wanted to retain some "competition" but obviously did their work with their heads in a bag.

Lee

[sirenwerks]

What does it take to make ethanol? Can you use potatoes? THe Eastern Shore used to be a major potato growing region.

[3rdrail]

What does it take to make ethanol? Can you use potatoes? THe Eastern Shore used to be a major potato growing region.

Ed oughtta know all about that, it's called vodka, and he uses it to weather cars. 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

"to weather cars"... yeah...