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Car 160 climbs Catoctin Mountain between Middletown and Braddock Heights while railfans set up their cameras. Photographer unknown – Hampton Collection of the H&FRHS
A special thank you goes out to the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway Historical Society, particularly Reuben Moss and Alex Postpischil, for contributing this article and the accompanying photos. To learn more about the Hagerstown and Frederick, or the H&F Historical Society, visit hfrhs.org.
For nearly 60 years, central Maryland was served by a rather interesting interurban railway that is best remembered as the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway. As expected, this system provided city streetcars to its namesake cities. However, the majority of business on the H&F involved interurban connections to nearly two dozen other communities in the region - providing both passenger and freight services. Some have gone as far as calling a trip on the H&F one of if not the most scenic interurban trolley rides in the country. This system was an 87 ½ mile network straddling the Middletown Valley consisting of five branch lines through rolling farmland and woods and a connecting route which could barely be considered a mainline but offered scenic mountaintop vistas at several points along the line. While the company often tried to operate as if it were as large a system as those in Baltimore or the District of Columbia before ultimately finding success in other ventures, the H&F’s railway operation itself looked and at times even survived as if it were a rustic tourist operation until the end.
While trolley service began in both cities during 1896, their construction and initial goals were wholly independent of the other. Hagerstown was the first to carry passengers beginning regular service on August 8 with the route to the nearby C&O Canal town of Williamsport and the majority of city service routes operating by the first week of September. The Hagerstown Railway Company was designed by founders Christian Lynch and William Jennings with traditional passenger service as a primary focus and once in place they quickly began creating subsidiary companies to allow for expansion; one north to meet with another interurban system in Pennsylvania and one east to the town of Boonsboro at the foot of the mountain. Along the way the Boonsboro route passed through the town of Funkstown where a privately owned amusement park became an easy destination to advertise.
Frederick & Middletown #11, one of the original cars purchased for that line, crosses a trestle while climbing toward Braddock Heights around 1900. - A.S. McDannel Photographer - H&FRHS Collection.
In Frederick County service began at the end of August, and the Frederick & Middletown Railway had constructed enough of its route to provide 15,000 passengers a ride to the county agricultural fair the following month. That same year the investors and directors of the company lead by George William Smith also founded a mountaintop resort community named Braddock Heights as a way to attract passengers from Frederick and beyond. This community would consist primarily of large resort style rental houses and hotels along with a company-owned amusement park accessible by trolley. A view of both Frederick and Middletown from a three story observation tower was often an advertised highlight while various other attractions and rides drew crowds for decades to follow.
Passenger service was recognized as essential to the Frederick & Middletown Railway yet, unlike Hagerstown where city investors had desired the arrival of city streetcars, the Frederick County company had actually been formed through the efforts of the residents of the smaller community of Middletown rather than receiving investment from anyone of note in Frederick City. These farmers and businessmen had long desired a railroad connection for freight service to their modest industries, farms, and stores. At the time, the only way for goods to travel to and from this community was the heavily used and severely worn Baltimore National Pike (Old Rt. 40) which in bad weather was nearly impassible across Catoctin Mountain. Once service began, a trip to Frederick which had taken as much as 8 hours by loaded wagon could be undertaken in half an hour carrying many times more freight in the process. Those in the valley readily took advantages of the provided benefits and only a year after trolley service began the company was reporting freight revenues far exceeding their original projections.
Following a series of mergers, including the absorption of a steam railway north from Frederick to Thurmont, the two systems merged in 1913. They had begun a connecting trolley service a decade earlier when the Hagerstown system built over the mountain in 1904 and connected with the Frederick route at Myersville, MD. The newly formed Hagerstown & Frederick Railway was entirely single-track standard gauge with passing tracks and sidings, and offered a freight connection to every community it served as well as regular passenger service. After the merger there was to be no further expansion of the H&F network as the company began focusing on expanding its utility presence through the purchase of power companies in the region. Two other trolley lines were however purchased and operated – the Cumberland Electric Railway and the Chambersburg, Greencastle & Waynesboro Street Railway in Pennsylvania which the Hagerstown system had long exchanged passengers with but could not share equipment with due to the CG&W being a wider gauge rail.
While some freight motors and passenger-only coaches were operated, the majority of the H&F fleet consisted of “semi-convertable combines” of various makes and models – all very similar but none exactly the same. These somewhat larger trolleys with tall, fully collapsible windows and baggage doors on one end allowed the system to collect mail, packages and minor freight loads along with passengers on almost every scheduled stop. Produce and milk were regular passengers on trips to Frederick or Hagerstown while furniture and packages were often carried back out of the city for delivery to houses along the line. The newest of these combines was #172 built by J.G. Brill in 1921.
The early 1920s proved to be the peak years of service for the H&F. For a brief time the company sold more fares in a year than both of the streetcar systems in Baltimore. While the various branch lines attracted travelers for shopping trips and commuters from the country traveling to work and school in the city, there were an abundance of fares to the company’s Braddock Heights Park, Electric Park in Funkstown, both the Hagerstown Fair and Frederick Fair, as well as joint round-trip tickets with the CG&W and Western Maryland Railway for trips to the latter company’s nearby Pen-Mar Park. These summer trips were made even more attractive by the fleet of open-air bench cars kept in service into the mid 20’s. Tourism had always been part of the H&F marketing strategy with the “Heart of Maryland” slogan dating back to the time of the Frederick Railroad around 1911 and remaining in use into the 1940s. One timetable even promoted that the company provided “Trolleys through the Alps of Maryland” to emphasize the view from the mountain-crossing trolleys.
A selection of cars outside the Frederick Carbarn in 1940, including coach #48 acquired from Cumberland and the most modern passenger car in service, typical combine #170, older wooden combine #164 and former CG&W work car #15 relocated to Frederick when that line was closed in 1932. At the time of this photo these four cars ranged
between 14 and 30 years old. - Photographer Unknown, H&FRHS Collection.
With mergers and purchases of other companies in the teens and early 20’s came a shift of focus within the Hagerstown and Frederick Railway. Despite the spike in passengers this change contributed to the lack of further expansion and investment in the rail system. Even before the merger with Hagerstown, Frederick Railroad President Emory Coblentz began developing the company into a power system extending into neighboring states. The success of this redirection prompted a name change in 1922 to The Potomac Public Service Company and again in 1923 to The Potomac Edison Company.
Employee pass. Note the "Operated by the P.E. Co." subscript at the top. Private collection.
Potomac Edison Company (not to be confused with the Capitol area’s Potomac Electric Power Co - PEPCO) kept operating the Hagerstown & Frederick Railway although like other similar companies in neighboring regions it found itself now operating under the umbrella of the American Waterworks & Electric Company for the remainder of its railway days and beyond. Contemporary to the company’s identity change P.E. Co. also began operating parallel and long distance bus services in the 1920s under the names of White Star Bus Line, Blue Ridge Bus Line and others. Blue Ridge Bus Company would later be sold to form the eastern US framework for Greyhound.
Eventually, city streetcars in Hagerstown were replaced with buses in 1929 and systematically the company followed suit with several of the branch lines through the 1930s. The main line between the cities was severed in 1938 to allow for the construction of a realignment of Rt. 40 and was soon replaced by the quicker bus service allowed by that new road. For much of the 1940’s the H&F consisted of its pre-1904 routes now accompanied by the more profitable Thurmont line.
The archetypal interurban for much of the H&F’s operation, #171 is seen here crossing Sandy Run north of Lewistown, MD in the early 1950’s. - Photographer unknown, HFRHS collection.
Throughout the next decade and a half groups such as the National Railway Historical Society and Electric Railroaders’ Association began chartering frequent trips on the line utilizing the now antiquated combines and freight motors. While other area systems had upgraded to the streamlined PCC cars or shut down entirely, the H&F still looked and operated much the same as it had during its heyday giving it an attractive draw to the rail and interurban history enthusiasts who knew its time was limited. It is primarily because of these trips that so many quality photographs and films survive of the H&F locations and fleet.
Service grew slightly during World War II, the greatest growth this time being freight due to the presence of both Fort Detrick along the Thurmont route and the Army Scrap Metal Salvage facility on the outskirts of Frederick along the Middletown route. Wartime freight bound to and from either site could be brought to Thurmont by the Western Maryland Railway and transported by H&F freight motor. The increase in freight – especially scrap metal – prompted the purchase of several second hand motors including two steeplecab road switchers, an express motor from the Washington & Old Dominion Railway in Virginia and a massive 52 foot freight motor from Capital Transit, the longest trolley ever used on the H&F. Thurmont residents would later recount tales of German tanks and planes salvaged from European battlefields piled in freight cars awaiting an H&F freight motor to take them away to the scrap yard.
Steeplecab 10 leads a train of sorted scrap past the B&O Railroad's Frederick freight complex along Carroll Street during WWII. A 1910 boxcab provides extra power on the rear of the train.
- Photographer unknown - Hampton/Tosh Collection of the H&FRHS
After the war automobile use and the closure of the scrap facility once again caused a sharp decline in ridership and freight and once more Potomac Edison began to downsize its rail operations. The last trolley left Hagerstown for Williamsport on August 4, 1947, and the last passenger trip to leave Frederick would be a Thurmont round trip on a rainy February 20 only 7 years later in 1954. In both cases the official last car was Combine #172 and on both days the same bus would be the first to travel the replacement route. Freight service continued on the ever shrinking line for several more years, switching from electric freight motors to diesel in 1955 and finally selling the last Frederick sidings to the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1961. Potomac Edison continued serving as the area power utility however and today the electrical networks begun as the Frederick & Middletown Railway and Hagerstown Railway survive as a part of the First Energy family.
Only four cars from the H&F survive but none are in operating condition. The Hagerstown & Frederick Railway Historical Society was formed in 1999 to preserve the history of this important Maryland interurban system. To learn more about the H&F and its surviving cars or to follow an interactive map of the route visit the Society’s website at www.HFRHS.org.
Written by Reuben Moss, Vice-President & Curator of the H&FRHS. Edited by Alex Postpischil.
Sources: “Blue Ridge Trolley” by Herbert H. Harwood Jr. LOC#73-97231 as well as resources from the H&FRHS and NRHS archives. 
Home built Freight Motor #5 was the last of the surviving cars to turn 100. Constructed in 1920 in Frederick, it is seen here in 1927 with a string of freight cars in Middletown. While this unit could pull this many cars on the Thurmont branch it was normally limited to one car over the mountain due to steep grades.
- Howard E. Johnston Photo - Hampton/Tosh Collection of the H&FRHS
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