Train Station

A small, defunct railroad that still has a big following will be the focus of presentations at the Old Line Museum in Delta, Pa. each Sunday in June from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Baldwin resident Jerome Murphy started the Ma & Pa Railroad Month in 1976. The first meetings were held at the Peach bottom railroad station. The Maryland and Pennsylvania railroad line, know as the Ma & Pa, formed in 1901 and ran a 77-mile route from Baltimore to York, Pa. There were 27 station stops, including Towson, Baldwin, Long Green, Glen Arm, Bel Air and Forest Hill.

A small, defunct railroad that still has a big following will be the focus of presentations at the Old Line Museum in Delta, Pa. each Sunday in June from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Baldwin resident Jerome Murphy started the Ma & Pa Railroad Month in 1976. The first meetings were held at the Peach bottom railroad station. The Maryland and Pennsylvania railroad line, know as the Ma & Pa, formed in 1901 and ran a 77-mile route from Baltimore to York, Pa. There were 27 station stops, including Towson, Baldwin, Long Green, Glen Arm, Bel Air and Forest Hill.

The Sykesville Historic Preservation Commission decided last Tuesdayto spend its remaining money earmarked for the train station restoration on burying electrical wiring.Chairwoman Rebecca Herman said the commission will pay to have an unsightly exterior electrical cable buried underground to try to add to the attractiveness of the building.The group also is buying a plaque to be placed somewhere in the train station with a list of names of those who donated $1,000 or more to the restoration project.

In 15 years, Baldwin's Station has gone from the start-up stage to the forefront of fine dining. On Monday, April 16, the Sykesville restaurant was named Maryland's Favorite Restaurant for 2012 at the 58th McCormick and Company Stars of the Industry Awards Gala. The annual event, held at Martin's West in Baltimore, honored the state's top restaurants in 14 different categories. The Restaurant Association of Maryland tallied thousands of votes cast by the dining public. When the votes were counted, Baldwin's Station ranked ahead of five other finalists from around the state.

SHARPSBURG -- Nearly a century ago, a timber-frame train station was built here on the right side of the tracks. Today, the building -- with ties to the Civil War -- is on the wrong side of the tracks.Antietam Station's location at the western edge of town, and the fact that it's situated on a small lot -- 0.3-acre -- have made it a hard sell for Washington County officials.They're looking for a temporary tenant -- maybe five to 20 years -- until the county can make better use of the building and its association with the nearby Antietam National Battlefield, the site of the bloodiest day of the Civil War.Tourism officials are not interested because most visitors come from interstate highways to the north.

Efforts to restore the Hampstead Train Station on Gill Avenue are moving ahead.The town has purchased the station, the Hampstead Train Station Committee reported at its March 3 meeting. Also, a tarp has been placed over the roof.Donations are being sought to cover the cost of restoration and the committee's incorporation. The incorporation is needed to receive funds from the National Historical Trust, Preservation Maryland and the Maryland Historical Society. Incorporation proceedings cost $450.

To the delight of many Hampstead residents, Maryland Midland Railway Inc. has contributed $500 to the restoration of the town's historic train depot.In a letter April 24, Paul D. Denton, Maryland Midland's president and chief operations officer, promised to contribute more after Maryland Midland completes its purchase of the line that runs through Hampstead. CSX Transportation Inc. owns the line."When our offer to purchase that line becomes reality, we'll double the amount in the attached check, and I'll deliver the second one personally by riding to Hampstead in one of our locomotives," Denton wrote.

If the company that makes Lionel electric trains wanted the ideal model for a toy train station, Perryville's depot would be it.The state's new commuter train service, which is called the Penn North line, serves this classic Cecil County depot, as well as Aberdeen and Edgewood (Harford County) and Martin (Baltimore County) plus the usual Baltimore-Washington stops. There are four trains in the morning; three in the evening.The state is betting that people will get out of their autos and ride the rails, boarding trains at stations that seem to have stepped out of a black-and-white movie.

SPRING is on the verge of blooming, and so is the new vest-pocket park on Holly Avenue next to the historic Severna Park train station.The 300-foot-long wedge, to be called Hatton-Regester Green, will include a gazebo, extensive landscaping and period lighting, said Jack Keene, head of the park development committee.The Association for Severna Park Improvement, Renewal and Enhancement (ASPIRE) is collecting $25,000 to help pay for the land purchase. The money is coming from the sale of paving bricks etched with the donor's name ($100 each)

You can't buy a ticket anymore, but the ticket window from the former Riderwood train station remains in place in the brick building that was transformed from whistle-stop to single-family home decades ago. The station was built around 1904 by the Northern Central Railroad, after the first station, which was a shed with a one-room station-and-general store, burned down. Passenger service on the two-car Parkton Local between Baltimore and Parkton was dropped in 1959 for lack of riders, and an NCR employee and his wife became the Riderwood station's first private owner residents a few years later.

It had been a lot of years since I regularly made use of the Aberdeen train station when a friend of my daughter's was scheduled to visit and had taken the train from New England. Back when I made use of the train a few times a year, the MARC commuter rail system was in the planning phases, then in its infancy. One of the old train station buildings, as I recall, had been converted for use by a dry cleaner. The station itself was a mess, with two revolting features: the so-called Concrete Monster pedestrian bridge that linked the two sides of the track and the tunnel under the track that also linked the two sides, but which wasn't, and still isn't, handicapped compliant.

When it comes to customer service, Amtrak is easily derailed.  My nephew gave me an Amtrak gift certificate for Christmas. I tried to use it on Sunday when making reservations for travel to New York.   First, I went online. Nothing relevant could I see on the computer screen.  I called the Amtrak 800 number. The friendly man said I had to go to the train station to use the gift certificate.   On Monday, I went to Penn Station. The man at the counter made the reservations, then said he thought he'd better check with his manager to be sure the certificate could be used at his terminal.

Here's my take on the O'Malley-Miller gas tax: Gov. Martin O'Malley and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had worked it out in a closed-door session that Mr. O'Malley would propose a 15-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax and Miller would knock it down to 10 cents. That way, everyone would feel good. But - hello? - where did that $1 billion in dedicated transportation taxes go? Answer: Both parties plundered the money for other projects. This is not about protecting Democratic or Republican turf; it's about the people you were elected to serve.

A man was struck and killed by an outbound Metra train on the Rock Island line at about 12:10 a.m. Monday in southwest suburban Tinley Park, officials said.The collision happened as the train was approaching the Oak Park Avenue train station in the 6700 block of South Street.The victim, described as a man in his 30s, was later pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. He remained unidentified this morning. An autopsy is scheduled for later today.Read more in TribLocal test

On a recent Saturday morning, I had an opportunity to ride Amtrak north from Baltimore to Philadelphia. I had not been on a train in something like 13 years, and I was interested to see how I would view the places in Harford and Cecil counties along the rail line from a different perspective. Crossing Bush River into Perryman, I was surprised to see very little had changed, or at least I had that feeling. Other than a few new industrial buildings here and there, and some new homes near the water at Forest Greens, the area looked open and much of it is still being farmed.

You guys are not even ready for this episode. I mean, did you eat today? Then you can't handle it, come back tomorrow. [/internet time swoosh] Okay, let's just dive in. First up: the teams are still in Copenhagen. They taxi to a statue of Hans Christian Andersen. Hans has a plaque on his statue with a short poem on it, and a Roadblocking team member must memorize the poem, bike to a theater and perform the poem for a drama critic. If they mess up, or if they don't infuse it with enough drama, they must bike back to the statue and try again.

In 15 years, Baldwin's Station has gone from the start-up stage to the forefront of fine dining. On Monday, April 16, the Sykesville restaurant was named Maryland's Favorite Restaurant for 2012 at the 58th McCormick and Company Stars of the Industry Awards Gala. The annual event, held at Martin's West in Baltimore, honored the state's top restaurants in 14 different categories. The Restaurant Association of Maryland tallied thousands of votes cast by the dining public. When the votes were counted, Baldwin's Station ranked ahead of five other finalists from around the state.

As he played in his front yard on Saturdays, Nathan King would look across the street where, as he saw it, the grown-ups were having all the fun. It was spring 1998 and a dozen volunteers had begun to reverse the decades of neglect that nearly turned the Hampstead train station into a pile of rotting timber. By the fall, Nathan was 10, and he got up the courage to walk over to Wayne Thomas, chairman of the Hampstead Train Station Committee. "I asked how old you had to be to help," said Nathan, who turns 12 next month.

"The Maryland Department of Transportation has big plans for a greener, more vibrant neighborhood around the Aberdeen train station, although, as it became clear during Thursday evening's public presentation, those plans are still a long way from becoming reality. " That's how reporter Bryna Zumer began her story in The Record last week about plans to modernize the train station in Aberdeen. It's not the words "greener" or "more vibrant" that stick out in my mind, it's the phrase "those plans are still a long way from becoming reality.

Anyone who has been around long enough to hear the storied history of Aberdeen can attest that if it weren't for the railroads, the city wouldn't be what it is today. Long before there was an Aberdeen Proving Ground, there were train stations in Aberdeen, serving both passengers and those who needed freight hauled to market. Aberdeen may not have been the rail hub Perryville once was, but its whistle stop status didn't hurt its standing a century and then some ago when the community was coming into its own. Strangely, Aberdeen in recent decades has been largely estranged from the rail lines that pass through it. And pass through is mostly what trains do in Aberdeen.