Why would we want Wicomico? (Redux)

In my last post, I mentioned I was excited to get a number of items back into my track plan. One of those was Wicomico St.

It was important to me to include some version of Wicomico in the plan, and the thought of having to lose it really bugged me. Part of it is for the operating interest, but more important is its part in my current modeling journey.

I talked about this ten(!) years ago in one of the early posts on the original MCTD blog. Some things have changed since then, including access to a bunch of the links in that post, so I figured I would revisit and revise the topic here.

Years ago, Baltimore, MD was a bastion of street running. Up through the early 1980s it was pretty common to see trains sharing space with cars and trucks in the streets of various industrial neighborhoods (including Fells Point, which today is about as gentrified as you can get). There is something about a train running down the middle of the road that speaks to me.

Wicomico St. is, of course, in Baltimore on the west side of the Inner Harbor. These days, it’s a stone’s throw from Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the Raven’s M&T Stadium. Even so, the street is still a fairly busy industrial area, albeit with a mysterious, unused railroad track embedded in the middle of the roadway. In 1984, though, it was a stone’s throw from the real Camden Yard and that track was part of an active switching area for the B&O (operating under the auspices of the Chessie System).

How did I find out about it? Well, there’s a bit of a chicken and egg thing going on. There used to be a web site called “B-More Ghosts” that talked about all kinds of cool things related to Baltimore. It’s gone now, but the Wayback Machine site means I can still show it to you.

I’m fuzzy about whether I first stumbled upon the B-More Ghosts “Street Trackage Survivors” page and that piqued my interest, or if I saw Pentrex’ Street Running video first and then stumbled across Wicomico while looking for suitable B&O candidates. Regardless, I was hooked on the concept and I decided very quickly that street running was something I wanted on my layout.

The B-More Ghosts site showed only two pictures of Wicomico St. It wasn’t much to go on, but enough to get me excited. Thankfully, there’s Google Maps and Bing Maps bird’s-eye view. From there I could make out that there was still lots of track left in the street. For example, as you can see in Figure 1, which shows Ellicott Engineering, there is still a ton of track in the asphalt, even to this day. (You can see this view yourself here.) That made it very easy to figure out the track layout in this once very active area.

Street running? Check.

I pored over the Google aerial photos for a long time. And that was great. But while I thought it was a neat area, I still had no idea what any of the industries were and what they might possibly ship and receive. Then the B&O Historical Society came to the rescue. I purchased from them a book called Baltimore Division Roadway Maps II (B&O H.S. Item number 71002 for anyone who is interested). I can’t tell you how invaluable this book has been. As you can see in Figure 2, it shows the industry names, their layout (as of the late 80s) and in some cases how many spots they had for loads.

Operating potential? Check.

I liked that it was compact and therefore build-able. And there was one final thing about it I liked: saying Wicomico. It was fun. Though, at the time I thought it was pronounced “wick-OH-mee-koh”. I was wrong. It’s “why-COM-i koh”. Not as much fun. Oh well.

So, to recap:

• Even though it was years ago, I’ve put a whole lot of effort into learning about this area, even taking a trip down there to take pictures of the entire street.
• Doing all the research and planning got me going full tilt into modeling the Chessie System in Baltimore. There was no turning back by then.
• The whole idea of street running still jazzes me.

I look back on all of that pretty fondly, so it was all just too good to give up. And that’s why we (still) want Wicomico.

(For the record I did not steal the street sign at the top of the post. It’s a replica.)

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