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In General


Location / Name:
Dorsey MD, Anne Arundel County

What's Here:
the Dorsey MARC commuter station

Data:
GPS Coordinates: 39.180917, -76.745768
Phone A/C: 410
ZIP: 21075

Access by train/transit:
MARC Commuter trains

The Scoop:

Not a whole heck of a lot here in Dorsey to lure you here just for the Dorsey station, or pictures here.  However, within a few minutes of driving, you have the St Denis, Savage, and Jessup stations.

And while you are in the Savage area, you have several bridges of notoriety, the best known of which is the last surviving example of a Bollman Truss Bridge.

For the signal fan, this area was predominated by CPL signals, but as of the summer of 2012, they were all replaced by color light signals :-(  There were a bunch that are easy to photograph on the south (or west) side of the station platforms at Jessup and Dorsey, and the north end of Savage.  The signal locations are still the same, just not as nice to frame up with a train.

Reminder:  following the B&O tradition, all directions on the B&O are either eastbound or westbound, at least here in the Baltimore area.  So, here on this map, a westbound freight is going south from Philly to DC, and an eastbound freight is actually going north.

Also in Jessup are a couple of industrial businesses with older first and second generation diesels as shown on the map.

If you in the mood for some great food at reasonable prices, you have the Timbuktu restaurant at the nearby Coca Cola Dr -- they are known for their crab cakes, and I recently attended a retirement party with about 40 people, and probably 35 of them had the crab cakes!

Acknowledgements:
Denver Todd

Websites and other additional information sources of interest for the area:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_and_Elk_Ridge_Railroad


Map

The above map is available here as a PDF


MARC's Camden Line Schedule







 


  MARC's Dorsey Station


Aerials from www.maps.live.com


The Dorsey station, looking south.  Look hard and you can just see the CPL's off the end of the platforms.  These signals are for the crossovers just south of here.





         
NB 7:24 -- Train #840

           
SB 7:40 -- Train #849

           
NB 7:49 -- Train #842

       
SB Freight around 8am, on the last pix on the right, you can see the NB signals, new and old

             
The above set was taken on March 17th, 2005, pretty early in the morn.



Signals


  NB/SB Signals just north of Dorsey Station

See the aerial shot of Dorsey Station for their locations.

 


  SB Signals at Dorsey Station and the north end of the crossover

One of the easiest set of signals to get pictures of in the Baltimore area!  When I was here in late July 2011, they were getting ready to replace the CPL's, and the signal on "left/NB" track was out of service, never lighting up as trains approached.

The bottom set of pictures is from March 17th, 2005, way before the changeover started.

             

     

         


  NB Signals at the south end of the Dorsey crossover







Disclaimers:

I love trains, and I love signals.  I am not an expert.  My webpages reflect what I find on the topic of the page.  This is something I have fun with while trying to help others.

Please Note:  Since the main focus of my two websites is railroad signals, the railfan guides are oriented towards the signal fan being able to locate them.  For those of you into the modeling aspect of our hobby, my indexa page has a list of almost everything railroad oriented I can think of to provide you with at least a few pictures to help you detail your pike.

If this is a railfan page, every effort has been made to make sure that the information contained on this map and in this railfan guide is correct.  Once in a while, an error may creep in :-)

My philosophy: Pictures and maps are worth a thousand words, especially for railfanning.  Text descriptions only get you so far, especially if you get lost or disoriented.  Take along good maps.... a GPS is OK to get somewhere, but maps are still better if you get lost!  I belong to AAA, which allows you to get local maps for free when you visit the local branches.  ADC puts out a nice series of county maps for the Washington DC area, but their state maps do not have the railroads on them.  If you can find em, I like the National Geographic map book of the U.S..... good, clear, and concise graphics, and they do a really good job of showing you where tourist type attractions are, although they too lack the railroads.  Other notes about specific areas will show up on that page if known.

Aerial shots were taken from either Google or Bing Maps as noted.  Screen captures are made with Snagit, a Techsmith product... a great tool if you have never used it! 

By the way, floobydust is a term I picked up 30-40 years ago from a National Semiconductor data book, and means miscellaneous and/or other stuff.

Pictures and additional information is always needed if anyone feels inclined to take 'em, send 'em, and share 'em, or if you have something to add or correct.... credit is always given!  Please be NICE!!!  Contact info is here

Beware: If used as a source, ANYTHING from Wikipedia must be treated as being possibly being inaccurate, wrong, or not true.

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Last Modified: 17-Feb-2020