Railroad Tracks

Over 15 years, residents along Baltimore's 26th Street have watched their sidewalk sink 6 feet as the earth has eroded around the railroad tracks that snake through their daily comings and goings.Iron rails and a concrete wall have collapsed, leaving gaping holes in the residents' protection from a 30-foot drop onto the CSX train tracks.Structural problems around the train track overpasses, which residents in the Harwood section of Charles Village have fought for years to have corrected, are believed to be among the worst in Baltimore's residential areas.

CORTLANDT, N.Y. - For decades, anglers along the Hudson River have been drawn to the wrong side of the tracks - the side with the water on it. They've risked fines and arrest for unlawfully crossing the railroad tracks, just to get to the best fishing spots.But John Cronin has taken steps to change that.Giving the Metro-North Commuter Railroad fair warning, he had planned to cross the tracks to go fishing. His goal: to get attention for being arrested, so he could challenge the railroad's right to block access to the river.

A family of six was depending on the Red Cross to find a place for them to sleep last night after a three-alarm fire late Sunday night extensively damaged their Keymar home."

FIRE* Taneytown: Taneytown firefighters were dispatched to investigate a report of smoke coming from a building on East Baltimore Street at the railroad tracks at 11:54 a.m. yesterday. They were out five minutes.

In the wake of two injuries along Harford railroad tracks in the past two days, the county Sheriff's Office will review its policy on calls for service along county tracks and then meet with railroad officials to see how safety might be improved.Sheriff's deputies routinely respond to calls about people trespassing on railroad property, but more often find that trespassers are long gone by the time they arrive, Sgt. Edward Hopkins, a sheriff's spokesman, said yesterday."If deputies do find anyone on the tracks, the suspects are held and turned over to railroad police for prosecution," he said.

The death of a 39-year-old woman who was struck by a train at a Laurel commuter rail station Tuesday has raised concerns over the safety of pedestrian walkways across railroad tracks in Maryland and elsewhere around the country.Workers posted signs at the Laurel Maryland Rail Commuter (MARC) station Thursday afternoon urging pedestrians to be cautious. The signs, identical to ones used at light rail stations, read: "Look Both Ways Before Crossing," and "Danger! Cross Tracks Only at Crosswalks."

CHICAGO -- "Good night."The cold hard steel of the gun's barrel pressed against Stephanie's head. She already had been shot once through her right shoulder, and blood trickled down her arm onto the smooth leather car seats, soaking her fur coat.The air was cold, the winter night still, except for a dog barking in the distance. The white $26,000 Infiniti, Stephanie's most prized possession among a collection that included diamond rings, bracelets and gold necklaces, now sat idling near the railroad tracks on the Far South Side.

Forget the red glare of those rock ets. Ditto the bombs bursting in air, or the twilight's last gleaming.The real hardship in getting to Fort McHenry is driving Key Highway.Francis Scott Key is probably doing 60 rpm in his grave. Let the British try to assail the fort by land this time -- the first wagon would throw an axle before it reached the Rusty Scupper.With its dips and convolutions, potholes, exposed cobblestones and abandoned railroad tracks, Key Highway has become the most jarring way in and out of Baltimore.

Perhaps you've taken a wrong turn off York Road just south of Cockeysville.Perhaps you were forced into the left-turn-only lane, or maybe you were just lost in the maze of Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bells that pack this piece of roadway.In any case, you have ended up in Texas.Now marked by no more than a dozen houses, Texas is as unlikely as its name.Guarding the gates of the Genstar Stone Products limestone quarry, and just blocks from the commercial sprawl that has become the trademark of suburbia, Texas' small cluster of stone and wood-frame houses stands along Church Lane.

The pieces of lumber that test a car's shock absorbers as it crosses the railroad tracks at Main Street and Railroad Avenue in Westminster may be replaced by rubber mats that promise a smoother crossing.The City Council's Finance Committee is mulling budget options to replace the lumber with rubber matting for 170 feet, from the Liberty Street side of the Main Street intersection to the edge of Winters Alley.A final decision rests with the full council, which may get thecommittee's recommendation in January.

When my colleague Peter Hermann oversaw The Sun's Watchdog feature, he reported on the hazard created by gaps in the fence around the railroad tracks at the south end of Charles Street in South Baltimore. With most Watchdog complaints, Hermann would end up calling government bureaucrats to report some incidence of broken or malfunctioning infrastructure. In most cases, he was able to rouse them to take quick action rather than deal with unfavorable publicity. But when he took on the South Baltimore fence problem two years ago, Hermann faced a much more formidable obstacle: the giant freight railroad CSX, which owned the crumbling fence that posed no significant barrier to those who thought the rail yard was a wonderful place to drink, ingest drugs or practice the world's oldest profession.

We can't let the year end without mentioning the 100th birthday of the Canton Railroad Co. which for some reason or other, passed by in May unnoticed. Since 1906, the Canton's fleet of locomotives and its hearty band of railroaders, has kept freight moving to and from local industries and moving through the port of Baltimore. A visitor to the railroad finds it located in a part of industrial Baltimore that is still hardworking and grimy, while not too far to the west, Edwin F. Hale Sr.'s First Mariner Bank building, a component of his Canton Crossing development, sprawls on a 65-acre waterfront site, a symbol of the new Canton.

It remains to be seen whether guests staying at Amtrak's 72-room hotel proposed for Baltimore's Pennsylvania Station will have their nocturnal reveries disturbed by the parade of rumbling trains or by gurgling MARC diesel locomotives idling overnight. However, there was once a time when railroads built, owned and operated hostelries for the convenience of passengers. For Amtrak, the Penn Station project would mark its entrance into the hotel business. In the late 19th century, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began building hotels along its route.

Since the days of the first locomotives, people have been finding their way onto railroad tracks. They walk along them. They sit on them, drink on them, lie on them - and more than 500 times a year they die on them, as a Havre de Grace boy did last weekend. Eleven-year-old Devron Pittman was the third person in the past three weeks to be struck and killed by a train in Maryland or Delaware. These cases and others illustrate the difficulty of trying to secure the tracks in the face of human impulse - to take a shortcut, to play daredevil, to find a place to get high and in some cases to end life violently.

A Hampstead man was found dead early yesterday after being run over by a train, state police said. An engineer operating a CSX freight train traveling east from Hanover, Pa., to Baltimore told police he saw a man, later identified as Jeffrey Alan Andrews, 42, lying on railroad tracks between Shiloh and Gill avenues in Hampstead about 2:10 a.m. The engineer, who was not identified, saw a body clothed in white and tried to warn Andrews with a horn, but...

Construction crews digging up a median strip between Fells Point and Washington Hill have uncovered what appear to be trolley tracks from a line that probably was abandoned a half-century ago. Crews working for P. Flanigan & Sons Inc. came across the metal rails last week while working on a $3.4 million beautification project for the city, said Kathy Chopper, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation. Surrounded by gray cobblestones, the tracks were found on Broadway, between Baltimore and Lombard streets.

An autopsy was performed yesterday on an unidentified woman who police said was killed and raped before her nude body was found Sunday in Dundalk. The woman was found in a wooded area near railroad tracks off the 2800 block of Sollers Point Road, according to Baltimore County police. They have not released her name pending notification of the next of kin. Police spokesman Bill Toohey said there was "a possibility' that the death was related to three recent killings of prostitutes in the city but added, "We have no evidence directly linking the two."

A decision on whether to permanently close Hanover Road, connecting Elkridge to Anne Arundel County across what Howard County officials deem a dangerous railroad crossing, was delayed yesterday after a County Council discussion -- but the road may be closed this fall as a test. The issue has split the community, making what earlier seemed a consensus decision controversial. The issue pits those worried about potential traffic from expanding Baltimore-Washington International Airport and an industrial park being built just east of the railroad tracks, against those who want the link kept intact.

In Baltimore County Dundalk woman, 53, killed in North Point Blvd. crash EASTPOINT - Elaine Lauren Ogden, 53, of the 3400 block of Wallford Drive in Dundalk was killed yesterday morning on North Point Boulevard after her car was hit by a truck, police said. According to police, she was turning onto North Point Boulevard from Eastpoint Mall at 8:47 a.m. when her 1992 Plymouth Sundance was struck by a 1995 Mack truck. In Baltimore City Woman found dead near railroad tracks A woman believed to be between 35 and 40 years old was found yesterday fatally stabbed in the stomach near railroad tracks in the 400 block of S. Stricker St., police said.

In Baltimore County Dundalk woman, 53, killed in North Point Blvd. crash EASTPOINT - Elaine Lauren Ogden, 53, of the 3400 block of Wallford Drive in Dundalk was killed yesterday morning on North Point Boulevard after her car was hit by a truck, police said. According to police, she was turning onto North Point Boulevard from Eastpoint Mall at 8:47 a.m. when her 1992 Plymouth Sundance was struck by a 1995 Mack truck. In Baltimore City Woman found dead near railroad tracks A woman believed to be between 35 and 40 years old was found yesterday fatally stabbed in the stomach near railroad tracks in the 400 block of S. Stricker St., police said.