Timeline of The Railroad
1845 - Mount Savage Coal & Iron Company (later Maryland & New York Coal and Iron Company) completes the Mount Savage Railroad, from Mt. Savage furnaces to Cumberland, with branches.
1846 - Maryland Mining Company completes the Eckhart Railroad, from Eckhart Mines, Maryland to Wills Creek (Eckhart Jct.).
1850 - Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad (C&P) is chartered.
1850 - Eckhart Railroad completes the Potomac Wharf Branch into Cumberland.
1853 - Georges Creek Coal & Iron Company builds the Georges Creek Railroad between Lonaconing, Maryland and Piedmont, West Virginia.
1863 - C&P acquires the Georges Creek Railroad after purchasing the Mt. Savage RR.
1870 - C&P absorbs Eckhart Railroad.
1876 - The Maryland and American Coal Companies start building the George's Creek and Cumberland Railroad (GC&C).
1879 - Pennsylvania Railroad completes PRR of Maryland line between State Line and Cumberland.
1888 - GC&C merges PRR of Maryland.
1907 - Western Maryland Railroad assumes control of the GC&C as part of the George Gould empire (merged into WM in 1917).
1939 - GC&C abandoned west of Eckhart Jct.
1944 - WM acquires C&P.
1953 - C&P formally merges with WM.
1982 - State Line Branch abandoned.
These railroads were built by the iron and coal companies in the early 1840s, in anticipation of connecting with the B&O Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, both then under construction to Cumberland. Some of these standard gauge mine roads owned and operated their own equipment, while others were operated with early B&O motive power and rolling stock. By 1870, all of the lines were absorbed into the Cumberland & Pennsylvania Railroad, which was itself absorbed into the Western Maryland system.
Read more about this topic: Maryland Mining Company
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“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)