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Location / Name:
Parkton MD, Baltimore County
What's Here:
Nothing now, it's a rail trail
Formerly:
- PRR Station / Depot
- Wye
- 3 track yard
- Signals
Data:
GPS Coordinates: 39.64114, -76.65916
Phone A/C: 410/443cell
ZIP: 21120
Milepost: 27.8
Access by train/transit:
None
Geography:
Very, very hilly
The Scoop:
The park sign for this location, along with a nicely detailed map, states: The spot where you are standing was once one of the busiest centers for the Northern Central Railroad in the state of Maryland. There were two 90 railroad car sidings, two crossover switches, three locomotive sidings for repairs and storage, a wye turnaround, the remains of which can still be seen on the west side of I-83, for a complete direction change, two through-tracks north and south, an attended train station, a water tank and water stand pipe for steam locomotives.
The Pennsy used to run a local passenger train up to Parkton, where it ended it's northward journey -- hence, the wye, station, and facilities to keep the engines here until the following morning for the return trip into Baltimore.
From Calvert Street to Parkton, there were 24 stops. The map below showing the entire line, TO SCALE, comes from OPEN RAILWAY MAP, and also shows other rail lines of today and yesteryear. I've also taken the liberty of denoting two other depots which are NOT on the Northern Central, just because I can..... :-) It is interesting to note that there WAS NOT a station at Lake Roland at Hollins (what was originally Relay, but it's use was discontinued in order to avoid confusion with a B&O station of that name) - my guess for this is (maybe) because the Greenspring Branch had it's own passenger trains, and the Pennsy figured it did not need a transfer point between the two. Would loved to have seen the hotel that was there!
According to the Kilduffs page:
-- 1958 – Parkton was listed as the only station in Baltimore County that had train service to Baltimore.
-- 1959 – Local train service was stopped between Baltimore & Parkton.
Other locations along the Parkton Local route that have their own pages are:
Monkton
Glencoe
Cockeysville
Texas
Timonium
Lutherville
Riderwood
Ruxton
Acknowledgements:
Google Maps
Google Streetview
historicbridges.org
kilduffs.net
Bob Dover
Steven Allen
EBay
Websites and other additional information sources of interest for the area:
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=152205
http://kilduffs.net/travels-through-maryland/old-maryland-train-stations/parkton-baltimore-county-train-station-maryland/
https://jbritton.pennsyrr.com/index.php/tpm/hobo-s-guide-to-the-pennsy/latest-on-location-articles/770-on-location-528-parkton-md
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/102949541476743707/
https://wynninghistory.com/2025/07/17/a-story-from-the-building-of-the-northern-central-railroad-1850s/
http://www.trainweb.org/oldmainline/ncr4.htm
From the south: IE: Baltimore..... Take exit 31 off of I-83, go east on Middletown Road till you get to York Rd, MD45. Take a left and head north. Go about 9/10 of a mile (1.6km), and take a left onto Frederick Rd. Follow that around and it will take you to the trail.
From the north: IE: York PA: Take exit 33, which dumps you onto York Rd, MD45, take a left, continuing south bound. In 1.24 mi (1.99 km), veer to your right following the smaller road, this will take you to the trail. As of 2024, Google Streetview is showing this road closed to get to the trail, but that might be temporary thing.....
A Pennsy schedule showing northbound trains from Washington DC and Baltimore, up the Northern Central.
1
2
3
4These are the famous Pennsy "Centipedes".
5Pennsy Alco's on a thru passenger train in Parkton, found on Pinterest, posted by Steven Allen
6Above from Facebook: Courtesy Gregory D. Pawelski, December 5th, 2022..... At one time, about 5 miles south of Freeland MD, PRR doodlebug No. 4666 ran on the Northern Central Rwy as "The Parkton Local". Here, she stands at the depot in Parkton MD, just before departing on its morning run down the double track Northern Central line to Baltimore on June 4, 1959. (Pennsylvania Railroad Collection)
The Pennsylvania Railroad, starting around 1915, began switching over from -semaphore- signals, to a newly developed kind called -position light- signals, or PL's for short. If you want to learn more about PL signals, here is my page on them. Instead of using the familiar green/yellow/red lenses, the signals were designed to be readable in foggy conditions which seemed to be prevalent in the many valleys of Pennsylvania.
In the above pictures, we can see a northbound PL signal in shots 4, 5, and 6, with number six giving us the best view of the signal.
Here is a picture of a standard single-head mainline block signal. This picture I took, is one of the very few I managed to snap off while the line was in operation all the way to York and Harrisburg before Hurricane Agnes came along in 1972 and wiped out the line. This shot was taken around Northern Parkway in Baltimore City, back in the days when regular people like you and me could drive our cars along the R-O-W and not get thrown into jail :-). Even back then, like the light rail signals of today, the signals displayed STOP unless cleared by the dispatcher for an oncoming train. The insert from my PL chart shows that the single marker lamp below the main head indicates this is a stop and proceed signal, meaning once the train has stopped, it can proceed at restricted speed until it (the train) gets a more permissive signal or an obstruction is come across (and it needs to stop again).
So here we have snippets of the three photos with the NB PL signal - we can easily tell it is a standard high PL signal. And if you blow up the picture with the greatest detail of the signal, it DOES look like there is a marker lamp on the pole, altho it blends in with the adjacent track:
What is harder to tell from the photos, is the presence of a SB signal. But in two of the pictures, we see a small round "thing" on a pole, on the south side of the station. This probably the southbound signal. Anyone know of additional pictures from in and around Parkton? Too bad we don't have a picture of a Parkton Local coming into the station, that would show off the SB signal really well. All the other pictures of NB trains are of thru trains heading to Harrisburg.
In the track schematic the park/trail system erected, they show a signal, #509, but it is located at the switch for the "third" siding track, and not on the mainline. There is no reason for there to be a signal there. A yard signal, if there was one, would NOT be numbered, and it would be a dwarf signal. It should be corrected and moved on the park display.
Always on the lookout for additional information, I searched Google's AI for a simple explanation of the signal numbering system, and it is shown below. However, if you want to learn more about Pennsy PL signal's (not that it is a link), don't use their link to that page, because it does not explain anything about Pennsy PL signals, it is a page for signal basics, which covers ALL signals. It's another one of my pages, that's how I know.....
the Frederick Road Bridge
Bob Dover/November 2, 2013
Notes from Historic Bridges.org:
The bridge still carries traffic, but the amount of traffic is very limited. In the mid-1800s, the Northern Central Railroad (NCRR) between Baltimore and York was built, and passed directly through the center of Parkton a few hundred feet west of the bridge. The bridge and the center of Parkton were then bypassed in 1929 with a newer, higher bridge carrying York Road (Maryland Route 45) over the creek a few hundred feet downstream of the Stone Arch. In the 1970s, the NCRR was closed. In the early 1990s, the railroad right-of-way was incorporated into Gunpowder Falls State Park, and was turned into a bicycle rail trail (once called the NCRR Trail, now called the Torrey C. Brown Trail). Old York Road was closed on either side of the rail trail, leaving the bridge on a short dead end road, about a quarter mile long, between York Road and the rail trail. There are two houses and a small parking lot (space for about 10 cars) for the rail trail on this dead end stretch between the bridge and the trail. So although the bridge does not carry through-traffic, it does carry cars to the two houses and the parking lot. One of the two houses is very interesting � it is in a 100-plus year old stone bank building, right at the end of the bridge.
Construction/Description: The bridge is a small stone arch bridge, consisting of two arches. The length of the bridge is about 50 feet, the deck is only about 10 feet above creek level, and the bridge is only about 15 feet wide (one lane of traffic). The bridge is made of mostly unshaped local stone, although the arches are outlined with flat stones placed radially around the arch.
Even though there is no documentation at the bridge itself, the status of the bridge as the oldest bridge in the state is well-documented in several state publications. Therefore, there is little risk of the bridge being removed accidentally without an understanding of its significance.
HistoricBridges.org Discussion: Engineer is assumed, per Historic Bridge Inventory. Also assumed to be the oldest stone arch bridge in the state. The bridge appears to have been altered with gunnite, shotcrete, or excessive mortar by previous repairs. This has visually obscured the stone to some extent. The bridge is highly significant in the state context as the oldest bridge of its kind and perhaps of any kind in the state. It is also noteworthy since it was built for the Baltimore and York-town Turnpike.
Courtesy USGS, click here for their index page.
1902
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