My '70s Show: A Teenager's Amateur Photos of Washington, DC and Maryland Railroads, 1974-1977

My 70s Show: A Teenager's Amateur Photos of Washington, DC and Maryland Railroads, 1974 -1977

I really miss the '70s, mainly because a lot of stuff that had existed for decades still existed then, stuff that has since gotten plowed under or swept away. Also, there was enough, not too much of everything. The Washington area had enough people, enough houses, enough shopping centers. We took a lot of Sunday rides in those days. At one point, we decided to photograph what was left of the local railroads. We thought they could not get any less interesting. Boy how wrong we were! Unfortunately, we went on these expeditions with a cheap camera, often in bad weather and with absolutely no sense of composition. Then we ordered 3x3 matte finish prints. We also missed a heluva lot of what there was to photograph. On the good side, what we did capture--dark and fuzzy as their depictions now are--are real gems. None of the old pictures that you will see as you scroll down are great, but thanks to scanning and Photohop, they are a bit more palatable.
	On a bridge over the Chessie/B&O tracks Paw Paw, West Virginia, 1976

	With a Pennsy B-1 "Rat" Strasburg, Railroad (PA), 1974


Our first stop is in Ivy City Yard in Washington, DC where equipment from the seven or so railroads that once converged on the capital was serviced. The Metro yard between New York and Rhode Island Aves. now occupies part of this facility. Here we see four specimens of the greatest locomotive ever, the Pennsylvania RR's GG-1. By the Mid-70's their green and brown paint jobs with gold striping had been replaced by dull Penn Central and Amtrak black. These engines were 40 years old then and we thought that they would be around forever. Who would ever want to get rid of such wonderful pieces of machinery? In a few years they were gone, the last ones doing commuter runs for NJ Transit.

The Southern was another railroad terminating in D.C. Here we see a couple of General Motors E-8s at Ivy City.

We read about Baltimore's President Street Station in The Sun and had to go over and see it. This is an 1850s structure that by 1975, had been long-forgotten as an historic railroad site and was serving as a warehouse. In the 1850s, it was covered with lots of fancy woodwork trim. This was the end of the line from Philadelphia during the Civil War. To continue to points South, one had to detrain here and go over to Camden Station. Union troops making that transfer in 1861 were savagely attacked by the Baltimorons as they marched from this building over to Camden. I heard that this structure had burned some time after this photo, but I believe part of it still stands.

Another structure from railroading's early days, this is a totally enclosed roundhouse from the 1880s in Martinsburg, WV. Later roundhouses for bigger engines were arcs with the turntables outside. The only other roundhouse of this type and age is at Mount Clare, the B&O RR Museum in Baltimore.

A structure familiar to many of you, the Gaithersurg station, built in 1878 for the B&O Metropolitan Division. Today it serves the MARC Brunswick Line. It is also a Non-Starbucks.

And here we are in Brunswick on the MD side of the Potomac up toward Harpers Ferry. In the background is a later-type roundhouse. In 1962, the Chesapeake & Ohio RR bought the venerable B&O. Immediately, the blue/gray/black B&O trains were overpainted in C&O's navy with yellow trim as you see here. In the early 70s, C&O/B&O decided to rename itself the Chessie System and bring back the Chessie kitten that had been such a beloved trademark in the '30s, '40s and '50s.

So the kitten made a comeback. Chessie System reversed the blue/yellow and come up with one of the most daring and memorable paint schemes ever, making the sleeping kitten a silhouette in the letter C. Here we are back at Ivy City watching a freight coming from Baltimore and heading to Silver Spring, Rockville and up the Potomac.

Back at Brunswick, we see another Chessie System engine, an SD-9. The trouble with these bright paint schemes is that they get dingey pretty quickly and railroads soon turn back to the dirt-hiding dark blues and greens.

Even after 30 years, you can still spot a Chessie car now and then as I did in this 2004 shot, but such cars are old and grafittied and ready for the paint shop if not the scrapyard. Even after cars like this are gone, the kitten will still live on in countless models.

Over a century and a half, 3 or 4 bridges were built to carry the B&O across the Potomac at Harpers Ferry. What you see here was built in 1931. An older 1890s bridge is off to the right.

A 2004 shot I took of the Harpers Ferry bridges. Here we see diving into the tunnel a CSX engine, as expected, with a Union Pacific diesel, very far from home indeed. It's probably a cross-country train and they just let the engine run all the way through, but still, it's like seeing a Canada goose in Egypt. In the foreground are the ruins of the 1850s bridge.

I've gotten a lot better at photography in 30 years. Chessie System has aquired much of the rr property on the East Coast and is now CSX, the X meaning "merger." Here we see one of their new quiet diesels speeding along the old C&O canal. Some of the stonework dates back to the 1830s. The B&O's 180th Anniversary: The B&O in Western PA, 1966 Across Maryland History: The B&O Railroad's Early Days Building For The Ages: The B&O and C&O along The Potomac Change For The Better: The B&O Transportation Museum My 70s Show: A Teenager's Amateur Photos of Washington, DC and Maryland Railroads, 1974-1977