Along the Old Main, No.9 - The Wye at Point of Rocks

Along the Old Main, No.9 - The Wye at Point of Rocks

While this series of photographs is devoted to the historic Old Main Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which runs from Relay, just outside of Baltimore, to Point of Rocks, Maryland, this image also shows the double-tracked mainline of the CSX Metropolitan Division from Washington, on the right.

The two lines converge at this wye at Point of Rocks, where the iconic Francis Baldwin designed
B&O station sits picturesquely between the two lines, which will join to form the Cumberland Subdivision.

The Metropolitan “Sub” handles not only fast freights, but passenger trains, including Amtrak’s Capitol Limited to Chicago and MARC Brunswick Line commuter trains, running as far as Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg in West Virginia. The “Old Main” is freight only, with the exception of a few Washington-Frederick MARC trains that diverge off the Metropolitan “Sub” just before the station and run on a portion of the Old Main, toward Frederick.

Here, a couple of CSX diesels, running light, are about to leave the Old Main
to head in the direction of Brunswick, where CSX maintains a large yard.

The photograph was taken on an autumn afternoon on FomaPan
Classic-100 film, through a Nikkor AI-s 80-200 mm f/4 lens on my Nikon FM.

And, yes, one fine afternoon, I'll return and wait for two trains to
converge here, one on each division, and catch that moment.

©2017 Steve Ember

From the same afternoon