The Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad (P&BC) was a railroad that operated in Pennsylvania and Maryland in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It operated a 110-mile (180 km) main line between West Philadelphia and Octoraro Junction, Maryland (near Port Deposit), plus several branch lines.
History
The P&BC was chartered in Pennsylvania in 1854 and quickly absorbed the Baltimore & Philadelphia Railroad and its Maryland charter.[1] Starting from a connection with the West Chester & Philadelphia Railroad (WC&P) at Wawa, Pennsylvania (formerly called Grubb's Bridge), the initial plan was to build southwest for 78 miles (126 km) to a junction with the Northern Central Railway, north of Baltimore. As built, however, the line would reach only from Wawa (where the WC&P line arrived from Philadelphia in 1856) to the northern bank of the Susquehanna River, in Cecil County, Maryland, near Port Deposit.
P&BC reached Rising Sun, Maryland on Christmas morning, 1865. By December 1868, it reached 46 miles (74 km) and its southernmost point at Rowlandsville (4 miles (6.4 km) north of Port Deposit, along Octoraro Creek), where it connected with the Columbia & Port Deposit Railroad (C&PD).[3] Instead of building its own bridge over the Susquehanna to continue service toward Baltimore,[4][3] the P&BC simply leased the C&PD line for a few miles to Perryville, where trains could proceed south over the new bridge built by the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad (PW&B).
In 1881, P&BC absorbed the West Chester & Philadelphia Railroad — both lines were controlled by the PW&B, which was itself controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) — extending its main line to West Philadelphia.
In 1916, P&BC was formally purchased by PW&B's successor company, the Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington.[5] Subsequently, the line from Wawa south to Rowlandsville was called the Octoraro Branch.Passenger train service from Octoraro to Perryville over the C&PD line ended in 1935, and during or shortly after World War II, passenger service was cut back to Oxford before being ended entirely in April 1948.[6][7]
Train Wreck of June 2nd, 1902
A Chester hero won't be forgotten
....
Former Clifton Heights resident Jim Boyd has been researching the head-on crash along the Baltimore Central Railroad that killed John B. Hendrickson, who lived at Seventh and Jeffrey streets in the Lamokin Village section of the city.
"He was a hero that saved a lot of lives by slowing the train down," said Boyd, a deputy sheriff in Chester County and former Pennsylvania State Trooper who was born and raised on Sycamore Street in Clifton Heights.
"He had the opportunity to jump from the train like everybody else did, but he stayed on. Nobody knows why."
....
The wreck occurred on a single-track stretch of the Baltimore Central Railroad in Elk View when a damaged freight train on its way to a Philadelphia repair yard ended up on a crash course with a special train carrying dignitaries from New York to graduation exercises at Lincoln University.
Hendrickson, 41, was a fireman aboard the special train on the day of his death. "A fireman's function was to shovel coal into the boiler to fuel the steam engine," Boyd said.
At 12:45 p.m., Hendrickson's westbound train was coming out of a blind curve near the Elkview station at about 50 mph. On the other side of the bend, a partially disabled eastbound engine on its way to a repair yard in Philadelphia came into focus.
Boyd said the crew of the eastbound train had received a pair of dispatches - the first telling them to wait on a sidetrack in Lincoln until the New York train passed. For some unknown reason, the dispatch was ignored or forgotten and the Philadelphia-bound engine left Lincoln prematurely, setting out on a crash course with the passenger train.
In Elk View, the engines came face to face at milepost 44 (the distance from Philadelphia).Just before impact, the crews aboard both trains opted to "join the birds,"railroad slang for abandoning a moving engine when a wreck is imminent.
The weight of the New York train and its two Pullman cars slammed into the slower moving, lighter, freight engine, pushing it back 300 feet to the Elkview station.
All but Hendrickson would survive.
....
In addition to the passengers from New York, Hendrickson was accompanied by trainmaster James Ruth, of Media, and an engineer by the name of William Miller. Among those on the freighter was fireman Walter Cully of the 200 block of Lloyd Street in Chester.
According to a front page story in the June 4, 1902, Chester Times, Hendrickson's body was crushed in the wreckage. His remains were handled by undertaker E.F. White and buried at Chester Rural Cemetery.
Continued Honoring of John Hendrickson is put in Place in Penn Township by naming a road in the Ovations at Elkview retirement community, Hendrickson Lane.
Decline
The abandoned Octoraro Branch at Wawa station in 2017
^Whiteley, Louis C. (1986). "Octoraro Odyssey". The High Line. Philadelphia Chapter, Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society. 6 & 7 (3, 4, & 1): 37.
