Found this great creek-level view of the Rock Creek Trestle just before it was demolished over on the BridgeHunter website. Some of the bents have been removed, and it is shown in its final days, but it’s great to have a visual time capsule of the bridge and surrounding area.
Monthly Archives: October 2021
Mystery Caboose in Bethesda
I have long heard legend of a caboose that sat forlorn on a siding in Bethesda in the years after the railroad was abandoned. Apparently a private owner had parked the caboose there for future restoration or display, but instead it sat, torched by an arsonist and rotting away until finally being removed.
I have no idea of the disposition of the caboose or of its heritage. The only B&O caboose I could find that resembles this one is an I-10 class, but it may be a stretch. There appear to be numbers on the side of it, but the only one I can definitively read is an eight and perhaps a five to the left. I believe it sat on the siding just south of River Rd. on the west side of the tracks; the location of the old oil unloading siding.
If anyone knows any additional information about this caboose and its heritage, I’d love to hear it!
PS. I have a large collection of images shot in the years after the Branch had been abandoned and during its conversion to a rail trail that I will be sharing over the coming months. Stay tuned!
The Washingtonian, Westbound at Georgetown Jct., ca 1942
July 26, 1942, 10:32am. Newly-shopped B&O V-2 class 4-6-4 locomotive 5340, the “Lord Baltimore,” heads up a westbound train #21, “The Washingtonian,” as it pounds across the crossover at Georgetown Junction. The iconic locomotive was built by in 1935 by the B&O at its Mt. Clare shops in Baltimore, MD. In 1942, it was shopped and assigned #5340. The locomotive was scrapped seven years after this photo in April, 1949. The Washingtonian ran between Baltimore, MD and Cleveland, OH from 1914 to 1956.
Photo by Bruce Fales. (A recent eBay purchase.)
Georgetown Branch, Now on Facebook
I recently set up a Facebook blog page for the Georgetown Branch. I will try to cross post anything that is posted on the blog over to FB, so any subscribers shouldn’t miss anything. Head over there if you are on FB and join us!
Catching Up: Oct 2021
I normally don’t like catch up posts, but I figure I should give everyone an update on what’s been going on. Earlier in the Summer I began a class in Cinema4D which occupied nearly all of my free time. Besides the weekly train club meetings, my hobby time shrunk to zero. The class wrapped up a few weeks ago so between catching up on email, attending the GSMTS as a vendor, and attending the NMRA NER convention and visiting family, I have had little time to spend on the GB project.
That is not to say nothing has been going on! Nay! In the small bits of free time I have had, I have been researching various photo mysteries, objects, buildings, freight cars and more. One thing I have spent a significant amount of free time on is working on the operations scheme for the railroad. This involves studying what information I do have, namely photographs of freight cars, first and second-hand stories about how the railroad operated and various other documents. (My life for a stack of waybills!) I will likely be using JMRI Operations Pro to handle movements on the layout. I have really enjoyed tinkering with the software and am impressed in the flexibility and utility it offers.
I have plans in the works to share several things here on the blog in the near future as well as push more to get some progress made on the layout. My Rock Creek trestle model is soldiering along, bit by bit. In the near future, I will be attending an Audi Club HPDE at VIR in Nov so I have a ton of car prep work to tackle for that! Busy busy.
In the meantime, I wanted to leave you with a teaser. I finally found a photo of the 1954 National Christmas Tree when it was parked down in Georgetown:
At some point I will try to write up a full article on this phenomenon, as I find it really fascinating and a super interesting facet of operations on the railroad. And to answer your question, yes, I will definitely be modeling this! 🙂