Philadelphia and Baltimore Central Railroad

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 construction began in 1855 at Concordville, Pennsylvania. The first section of the line, between Wawa Junction and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, opened in 1859. Rails reached Oxford, Pennsylvania by the following year, and the first train arrived there on December 22, 1860.[2][3]

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]

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.

"The deceased was well-known in Chester and it has been but a few years since he was employed as a baker at the establishment of Fred Lang of Morton Street," the story read. Hendrickson was a member of Col. D.F. Houston Council, No. 739, Jr. Order of United American Mechanics. .... ©The Daily Times 2002 <<

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.

The abandoned Octoraro Branch at Wawa station in 2017

In 1961, the PRR abandoned the Octoraro Branch south of Colora, Maryland.[8] Tourist operator Wawa & Concordville Railroad leased the line between Concordville and Wawa in 1967 and 1968. The PRR merged with the New York Central Railroad in 1968 to form the Penn Central (PC), which was bankrupt by 1970. Hurricane Agnes caused several washouts in 1972 and rendered the line unusable north of Brandywine Creek.[3]

Following the PC bankruptcy, ownership of the line went to Conrail, and then to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), which leased the operable section to short-line freight railroad companies. The Octoraro Railway provided service between Oxford and Chadds Ford Junction from 1977 to 1994, while also operating the ex-Reading Wilmington & Northern branch through a connection at the latter place.[9] In succession, the Delaware Valley Railway, the Brandywine Valley Railroad, and the Morristown & Erie Railway operated the line between 1994 and 2004. The East Penn Railroad bought the line from SEPTA in 2004, and currently operates between Nottingham, Pennsylvania and Chadds Ford Junction.[10] SEPTA has retained ownership of the derelict Chadds Ford-Wawa section.[11]

• List of defunct Maryland railroads
• List of defunct Pennsylvania railroads
• Wawa station