Point of Rocks - No.1

Point of Rocks - No.1

It is 5:15 on a Friday afternoon in late September at Point of Rocks, Maryland, and an
exciting few hours of train watching and shooting is ramping up in the late afternoon sunshine.
A few minutes ago, Amtrak’s “Capitol Limited” streaked by on the Metropolitan Branch (the closer set of tracks) on its way to Chicago. It does not stop here, but will stop a few miles down the line at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

But what makes Point of Rocks a real attraction for this photographer is that its iconic Francis Baldwin designed station dating back to the days of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (now CSX) sits at the point of a wye, where two historic B&O lines converge, the “Old Main Line” from Baltimore and the busy Metropolitan Branch coming up from Washington DC.

With the exception of a few Frederick, Maryland bound MARC commuter trains from Washington using a portion of it, the “Old Main” hasn’t seen passenger trains since the 1950s when the B&O ran its last local trains from Baltimore through the craggy Patapsco Valley.

However, the Old Main does see lots of CSX heavy freights. And, at this moment, one such train, powered by four diesel-electric locomotives is rumbling through Point of Rocks, as the first unit, an EMD GP-40-2, growls past the old station. After passing through the signals, the train will merge with the west bound mainline, heading for Brunswick, Maryland, Harpers Ferry, and points west.

It will be part of an interesting variety of trains captured between now and dark, including
three westbound MARC commuter trains bound for Martinsburg, West Virginia, the eastbound
Capitol Limited (apparently running rather late), and more freight action on the Old Main.

Here's the station from a different point.