One More Part of Western Maryland Railway History Destroyed!
Hagerstown Roundhouse Comes Crumbling Down After Lost Lobbying Effort
By Sol Tucker . . .
[Published in the April 1999 issue of the Bull Sheet]
Eighteen years ago, I first started taking the drive to Hagerstown, Maryland, with my father to see the last of the Western Maryland Railway, and now, in 1999, to me, it's all but gone with the removal of the roundhouse at Hagerstown Yard.
There are no more red, white and black SD40's, or brand new GP40's, and no more BL2's. Now what remains is just an empty lot and the old YD Yard Office sitting all but empty, with just an agent remaining in that modern brick building.
Beside the brick building sat the WM's sprawling roundhouse which basically absorbed one side of Burhans Boulevard. But just this past February that one side of Burhans Boulevard became empty, and over 14 years of lobbying came to an end as the roundhouse began to come crumbling down.
I can't begin to tell you how sad it was to see something like the roundhouse come crumbling down as it seems just like yesterday that the power for Reading 97, the WM's 3798 and 3797, pulled out of the roundhouse for the last time. For those of you who do not know, the WM-3798 (or CSX-6573) was the last WM-painted engine to remain on the CSX.
Now, like the 6573, the roundhouse has been removed from existence and an empty space remains in the middle of Hagerstown. What many people saw as the eyesore of Hagerstown really could have been what the people of the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum saw as a museum dedicated to the history of railroading in Hagerstown.
Since the roundhouse has been removed, the Roundhouse Museum now could be the next to leave as the museum director said: "We saw 14 years of hard work and effort to save the roundhouse go to waste. Now that we lost our effort, we will move on and that move will be out of Hagerstown. We will take our steam engine, roundhouse bricks and the turntable and find a better spot to start over."
After spending a Saturday last month gathering some of history, I also had to gather a tissue to wipe away a tear as the sight of another childhood memory came falling down right in front of me.
The following Monday I returned to Hagerstown and saw the construction equipment tearing the steel and knocking out the bricks. If there is one thing positive to say about the roundhouse coming down, it was the fact that it did not come down easy... as it had been built with pride, the pride that it never would have to be disassembled.
Once again, we say good bye to another part of the WM, most of which may be gone in the next 10 years, so go out and take pictures of those endangered buildings.
.