These long-abandoned railroads helped shape Maryland’s suburbs

HISTORY By DW Rowlands (Contributor) April 6, 2020

Much of DC beyond the original L’Enfant city and Georgetown consists of “streetcar suburbs,” namely late-19th and early-20th Century communities that grew up around streetcar lines. While electric streetcars didn’t extend to Maryland until the 1890s, Washington’s first steam railroad line, to Baltimore, opened in 1837 and commuters from Maryland rode trains into the city as early as the Civil War.

I recently wrote about commuter rail service on the B&O Railroad’s Washington Branch (now the Camden Line), the Metropolitan Branch (now the Brunswick Line), and on the B&O Railroad’s main competitor in Maryland: the Pennsylvania Railroad, which operated what became the Penn Line.

All three of these lines still operate commuter rail trains today, but two relatively long-distance lines that no longer exist also had an impact on the region. They radiated out from Seat Pleasant at the District’s eastern corner in the early 20th Century: the Chesapeake Beach Railway and the Washington, Baltimore, & Annapolis Electric Railway (WB&A).

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Author’s note: A detailed history of the WB&A can be found in John E. Merriken’s book Every Hour, On the Hour: A Chronicle of the Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis Electric Railroad.

This article was first published on September 4, 2018. It’s interesting to look back at the region’s history, so we are sharing it again.