Weverton to Roxbury -
B & O
Thanks to Mike Palmer for the pictures and information on this page.
Photos are from February 23, 2003, with snow left over from the President's Day storm.

 

 

MD State Route 68 facing south at Breathedsville, approx. halfway between Lappans and Boonsboro.  Behind the camera is a former agricultural structure (feed mill?) that likely had a siding in the past.  The right of way runs parallel to (and west of) MD route 65 south of here, through small farm towns.

 

 

 

 

 

This branch left the B&O mainline at Weverton, MD, between BrunswickMD and Harpers FerryWV.  It is segment #34 in the Maryland section of Nielsen's book "Right-of-Way, A Guide To Abandoned Railroads".  (See Links page for more information on this book). The branch was initially constructed some time in the late 1800's, and ran north to Hagerstown.  The B&O had its own station in town; a replica on the site is now a car wash.  The B&O also had a bypass that cut around the southeast side of Hagerstown and connected directly from the branch to the old Western Maryland mainline; this bypass is abandoned also and ran from Security Jct on the B&O to Security on the WM.

Hagerstown still has a lot of rail activity for a small town, including a former WM yard and buildings that are now the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum. Part of this branch is still in service, between Hagerstown and a state prison called Roxbury in the SPV atlas (see Links page for information on this resource).  South of there, the entire remainder of the branch was abandoned in the 1970's.  Towns on this section to the S of Roxbury are Breathedsville, Keedysville, Eakle's Mill, Rohrersville, Beeler's Summit, Gapland, Brownsville, Augusta, Stonebreaker and into Weverton on the line between Washington, DC and Harper's Ferry, WV.

 

 

Site of junction with the CSX (B&O) main at Weverville, facing east.  The cracks in the pavement in the left foreground are where the branch line rails were paved over.  To the right, an east bound train of auto racks crawls by this location.  This location has slow speeds for freights and Amtrak (Capitol Ltd) all year long, regardless of weather.