Annapolis by Rail: 'The only way to go'

By Gilbert Sandler

When the Maryland legislature is in session, many of the area’s delegates and senators make the trip from Batimore to Annapolis along the highway systems that lead there: Interstate 97, Route 50, Route 3, Route 100, Ritchie highway. The trip in a car purring along is warm and comfortable; tape deck playing, cell phone at the ready. It is all pleasant enough, and fast—but for a true Baltimore experience it doesn’t compare to the old B&A train to Annapolis—the legislators’ favorite way to get from Baltimore to the State House up to 1950.

That train, considerered on reflection by some to have been rickety and jerkwater, nevertheless, offered its passengers the pleasure of one another’ s company and the speial luxury of watching the world go by through the window of a tain. Depending on the year we are discussing. It left one of three Baltimore stations: Liberty Street, Camden Station, Howard and lombard0 every half hour and made no fewer than 30 stops along the way. Stations were only a minute or two apart.

For example, if you left Baltimore on the 8:05, you’d be in Westport a 8:17 an at 8:18, English Consul . . .

8:20 Rosemount

8:21 Baltimore Highlands

8:22 Pumphrey

8:24 North Linthicum

8:26 Lintinum

8:28 Shipley

. . . and so on for an hour and 5 minutes into Annapolis. (The 8:05 got to Glen Burnie at 8:35)

As the train approached and then left each station, it would give out a couple of peep-peeps. Because of the frequency of the starts and stops, passengers would be hearing the peep-peeping non-stop all the way to Annapolis. At every station they would be witness to the human drama of arrival and departure so peculiar to travel by train, and to life when it moved at a slower pace, and in a smaller frame.

Perhaps the loveliest part of that ride was the rip across the old wooden Severn River Bridge, particularly in spring and fall. The foliage reflected in the water as the train made its way through the sylvan Brigadoon and out if it—into the city of annapolis.The end of the line was the Bladen street station.

But the end of the line for the railroad itself came in 1950. When railroad line dies it takes a lot into the grave with it. The B&A took the cameraderie of lots passengers, the endless song of peep-peep out into the Anne Arundel countryside, with tiny stations with so many names now so long forgotten, and the slow, mesmerizing ride across the Severn River bridge.

Today’s legislators often talk about how difficult their jobs have become compared to their predecessors in the old days. We have our own thoughts on why: The B&A doesn’t run any more.