Cumberland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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General information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Location | 13 Canal Street Cumberland, MD 21502 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 39°38′58″N78°45′50″W / 39.64944°N 78.76389°W | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Line(s) | Western Maryland Scenic Railroad | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Platforms | 1 side platform | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tracks | 3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Construction | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parking | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Accessible | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Opened | 1913 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rebuilt | 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Services | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Western Maryland Railway Station | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Area | 1 acre (0.40 ha) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NRHP reference No. | 73000885 [1] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Added to NRHP | June 19, 1973 |
Cumberland station is a historic railway station in Cumberland, Allegany County, Maryland. It was built in 1913 as a stop for the Western Maryland Railway (WM). The building was operated as a passenger station until the WM ended service in 1959, and it continued to be used by the railway until 1976. It was subsequently restored and currently serves as a museum and offices, as well as the operating base for a heritage railway.
The station was designed by Baltimore architect C. M. Anderson, and sited on a filled-in basin at the terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. [2] The building is a large commercial-style building that expresses the architectural functionalism of the turn of the 20th century. The brick structure is nine bays long and three bays wide, with two monumental stories on the west facade and three stories on the east. A one-story platform shelter runs along the west facade and extends out toward the tracks. [3]
The WM began daily through-train passenger service between Baltimore and Chicago, by way of Cumberland, on June 15, 1913. For several years the premier trains on the route, the Chicago Limited and Baltimore Limited, featured Pullman sleeping car service. Other WM trains ran between Cumberland and Elkins, West Virginia. The number and variety of passenger trains decreased through the years of the Great Depression and afterward. The WM ended its passenger train service between Cumberland and Baltimore in 1953, and the Cumberland-Elkins trains ended in 1959. [4] : 239–266
The WM used the upper floors of the station for its Western Division offices, and a control tower, even after the railroad's absorption into the Chessie System, until the dispatchers were reassigned in 1976. [4] : 13–14, 290 The building slowly fell into disrepair, and Chessie leased it, and later sold it to the Kelly Tire Company to store tires. The City of Cumberland subsequently bought the building for one dollar. [4] : 318
With the advent of the initiative in Cumberland to create a scenic railroad using the former WM trackage north out of the city, the station was partially restored in 1990. Full restoration did not begin, however, until the creation of the Canal Place Preservation and Development Authority in 1996. [5] This restoration created a museum area for the National Park Service on the first floor; a waiting area, gift shop, and cafe on the second floor; and office spaces on the third and fourth floors. Exterior work included the construction of an elevator tower; third, display track; a second platform; handicapped passenger accessibility ramp; and the restoration of the platform shelters, WM employee memorial, and the pedestrian railroad underpass.
Today the building is part of a preservation district called Canal Place, a facility operated by the Canal Place Preservation and Development Authority. The station houses offices of the Authority, the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, a visitors center for the C&O Canal National Historic Park, and leased offices to local officials and businesses.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as the Western Maryland Railway Station. [1]
Cumberland is a city in and the county seat of Allegany County, Maryland, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 19,075. Located on the Potomac River, Cumberland is a regional business and commercial center for Western Maryland and the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia. It is the primary city of the Cumberland metropolitan area, which had 95,044 residents in 2020.
Baltimore Penn Station, formally named Baltimore Pennsylvania Station in full, is the main inter-city passenger rail hub in Baltimore, Maryland. Designed by New York City architect Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison (1872–1938), it was constructed in 1911 in the Beaux-Arts style of architecture for the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is located at 1515 N. Charles Street, about a mile and a half north of downtown and the Inner Harbor, between the Mount Vernon neighborhood to the south, and Station North to the north. Originally called Union Station because it served the Pennsylvania Railroad and Western Maryland Railway, it was renamed to match other Pennsylvania Stations in 1928.
The B&O Railroad Museum is a museum and historic railway station exhibiting historic railroad equipment in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) company originally opened the museum on July 4, 1953, with the name of the Baltimore & Ohio Transportation Museum. It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S. The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, and retains 40 acres of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops site, which is where, in 1829, the B&O began America's first railroad and is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States.
The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) that operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation.
The Queen City Hotel was constructed in 1871 by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in Cumberland, Maryland to serve both as a train station and as a destination. Hosting 174 rooms, it also had such features as formal gardens with a fountain, a ballroom and 400-seat dining room. It was torn down in 1972 to make room for a new main United States Post Office and Distribution facility with a much smaller station for Amtrak service between the new Post Office and the railroad tracks.
The Western Maryland Scenic Railroad (WMSR) is a heritage railroad based in Cumberland, Maryland, that operates passenger excursion trains and occasional freight trains using both steam and diesel locomotives over ex-Western Maryland Railway (WM) tracks between Cumberland and Frostburg. The railroad offers coach and first class service, murder mystery excursions, and special seasonal trips.
Oldtown is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Allegany County, Maryland, United States, along the North Branch Potomac River. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 86.
The Northern Central Railway (NCRY) was a Class I Railroad in the United States connecting Baltimore, Maryland, with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River. Completed in 1858, the line came under the control of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1861, when the PRR acquired a controlling interest in the Northern Central's stock to compete with the rival Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O).
The Cumberland and Pennsylvania Railroad (C&P) was an American railroad which operated in Western Maryland. Primarily a coal hauler, it was owned by the Consolidation Coal Company, and was purchased by the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in 1944.
The Eckhart Branch Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Cumberland, Maryland area in the 19th century.
Cumberland is a train station in Cumberland, Maryland, United States served by Amtrak, the national railroad passenger system. It is also served by the Bayrunner Shuttle bus, which runs between Grantsville and BWI Airport. The station has one side platform serving the two tracks of the Cumberland Terminal Subdivision.
Canal Place is a 58.1-acre (235,000 m2) heritage area located in Cumberland, Maryland at the western terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
Canal Parkway, which carries the unsigned Maryland Route 61 designation, is a state highway and automobile parkway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The road begins at the West Virginia state line at the North Branch Potomac River opposite Wiley Ford, where the highway continues south as West Virginia Route 28. The parkway runs 1.94 miles (3.12 km) north to MD 51 within the city of Cumberland. Canal Parkway provides a connection between downtown Cumberland and the South Cumberland neighborhood and with Greater Cumberland Regional Airport, which is located in Mineral County, West Virginia.
The Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum in Ellicott City, Maryland, is the oldest remaining passenger railway station in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. It was built in 1830 as the terminus of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line from Baltimore to the town then called Ellicott's Mills, and a facility to service steam locomotives at the end of the 13-mile (21 km) run. The station, a National Historic Landmark, is now used as a museum.
Western Maryland Railroad Right-of-Way, Milepost 126 to Milepost 160 is a historic section of the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in Allegany County, Maryland, and Morgan County, West Virginia. It is an abandoned 34-mile (55 km) section of the right-of-way between milepost 126 at the intersection of the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal and Long Ridge Road, Woodmont, and milepost 160 just west of Maryland Route 51, North Branch. It closely parallels the Potomac River and the C&O Canal, which runs along the north bank of the river, and includes three tunnels. Seven miles of the roadbed are in West Virginia near Paw Paw.
The West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railway (WVC&P) was a railroad in West Virginia and Maryland operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It had main lines radiating from Elkins, West Virginia in four principal directions: north to Cumberland, Maryland; west to Belington, WV; south to Huttonsville, WV; and east to Durbin, WV. Some of the routes were constructed through subsidiary companies, the Piedmont and Cumberland Railway and the Coal and Iron Railway.
The Cumberland Terminal Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the Cumberland, Maryland area. The line centers on the Cumberland rail yard and is a junction with three other subdivisions.
Indigo Tunnel is an abandoned railroad tunnel in Allegany County, Maryland, located about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Little Orleans. Built by the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in 1904 as part of its Cumberland Extension project from Hagerstown west to Cumberland along the Potomac River valley, which involved construction of four additional tunnels and 23 bridges, Indigo was the WM's longest tunnel. The new rail line opened in 1906. Trains ran through the tunnel until the rail line was abandoned by the newly formed Chessie System in 1975, in favor of the parallel Baltimore and Ohio railroad line on the opposite side of the Potomac River.
Kessler Tunnel is an abandoned railroad tunnel in Allegany County, Maryland, located about 8.5 miles (13.7 km) east-northeast of Oldtown. It was built by the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in 1906. It was constructed with concrete arch portals and the roof has wood planking. The tunnel was named for landowner John Kessler.
Stickpile Tunnel, also known as Greenridge Tunnel, is an abandoned railroad tunnel in Allegany County, Maryland, located about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southwest of Little Orleans. It was built by the Western Maryland Railway (WM) in 1906. It was constructed with concrete arch portals and the roof has wood planking.