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The Baltimore Metro Subway system, hereafter called the Baltimore Metro system, is a simple system. It consists of a grand total of 14 stations, nine of which were included when the system first opened (Charles Center to Reisterstown Plaza).
The system opened for business in 1983. It was later expanded northward to Owings Mills in 1987. The latest expansion, in 1994, extended the downtown service to Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. It takes about a half an hour to traverse the route one way.
The system is 15.2 miles long, with 6.2 miles of it underground. Of the remaining 9 miles, 2.2 miles of it are elevated, and 6.8 are at grade. Above Old Court Road and the Beltway, the line runs up interstate 795, making it basically a commuter railroad, cause it certainly isn't convenient to anything if you don't have a car. According to the stats on Wikipedia, the cost of the total system ran 1.392 billion bucks.
One of the more interesting things I found out while working at the MTA's Light Rail division is that above Reisterstown Road, for some unknown reason, the gauge is a quarter inch less than the standard 4"-8 1/2". There is a 30 foot section where the two gauges "mesh". Most people are unaware of this fact, including people that work at the Metro system.
The heavy rail shops are located
between the Rogers Ave and W Cold Spring stations. Altho shots of the yard
itself aren't really possible, satisfactory pix can be had of some of the shop
and yard operations from the fence line along Wabash Ave. I've never been
bothered taking pix from there, even tho it is across the street from one of the
Baltimore City district courts, with plenty of police going by. Fairly
decent pictures can be had from a passing train, but this supposes you can find
a halfway good window.
Also just
down the street, is the Northwest bus depot.
The cars were built by Budd, in a now closed plant northwest of Philadelphia. The cars are identical to those used on the Miami system, in fact, they were ordered at the same time to lower the cost. They draw power from a typical heavy rail third rail system, which operates at 600VDC. The cars consist of married pair, which never get separated unless being serviced, because each individual car has different systems needed for the two to operate as one. The cars are 72 feet long, and 9.5 feet wide. They have a top speed of 70mph, altho the top speed is kept to the speed limit of i795 so people won't race the trains! Trains can have 1, 2, or 3 pairs of cars, depending on the time of day. Each pair can handle 166 passengers, with 76 being seated, and 90 standing.
Because of cost, the only expansions to the line that have been considered were to the Amtrak NEC going straight up Broadway, and/or heading northeast to the Whitemarsh area, altho this expansion has been protested by the local residents, not wanting to go thru what the CBD went thru when they originally built the system, and when the expansion to Hopkins happened (a dedicated busway was given as an alternative, but that hasn't happened either due to the population density in the northeast area).
The map below is of both the Light and Heavy Rail systems in Baltimore, and illustrates the lack of a common station for the two systems, thereby making transfers between the two a royal pain in bad weather.
The Metro System used to be run in the automatic mode, where the operators only operate the doors, or in the case of an emergency, the system could be put into the manual mode. Operators were required to make one trip a day manually to stay in practice. This was called ATO, or Automatic Train Operation. This changed a number of years ago after several accidents happened on other systems, while in the automatic mode, notably the one in DC where one train ran into the back end of another one in the snow and sleet.
The signals were originally on the system as a means of back-up when they had to operate in the manual mode. They appear mainly in advance of crossovers, and in the yard all over the place.
The OCC, Operations Control Center, is located above the Lexington Market station, and is the equivalent to Light Rail Control, which was formerly located at the main shops north at North Avenue, but is now in the same building as OCC. Everything for the Metro system is controlled and monitored from here.
Trains headed towards Hopkins (Track 1) are considered eastbound, while those to Owings Mills (Track 2) are westbound.
Trains run from 5am to midnight during the week, and 06:00 to 00:00 on the weekends. They run on 8 minute headways during the rush hours, 11 minutes off peak, and 15 minutes on the weekends.
Fares are the same as on Light Rail, being $1.75 for a one way fare, and $4.50 for an all day pass (all day pass for seniors is $2.10 as of 9/17). The fares are also good on the bus and light rail systems.
Maps
click here for the above map in PDF format
In The Movies
These three screen shots off my TV are from the movie No Way Out from 1987. The story takes place in Washington DC, but I guess they couldn't work out a deal with the DC Metro system to shoot in their system. The scene was shot at Charles Center. In the scene following this where Kevin Costner comes out of the subway, he's in Union Station. They made no effort to make the MTA cars look like WMATA cars.
Owings Mills
Old Court
Milford Mill
Reisterstown Plaza
Rogers Ave
the Shops
West Cold Spring Lane
Into The Tunnel
Mondawmin
Penn North
Upton
State Center / Cultural Center
Lexington Market
Charles Center
Shot Tower / Market Place
Johns Hopkins Hospital
What you can see as you go over the SB 795 to EB 695 interchange
Old Court is probably the neatest station in
terms of access, having a long walkway over a small creek. Adjacent to the
station is the "new" MOW facilty.
In order to put this station in, they had to
redesign Milford Mill Road, and gave it an overpass and a complicated series of
intersections to what was formerly a straight shot on a "country" road with only
the "Western Maryland" (CSX) to contend with. CSX's tracks are above the
Metro tracks in the above photo.
The former end of the line for the Phase 1
section.
Amtrak passes by here, but there is no connection to the trains. Not a good railfan area!
STATE CENTER / CULTURAL CENTER
The Metro station is on the left, with the blue colored covering... at the other end of the block, to the right, you can see the Light Rail line... this
is the closest the two come together, and the reason the system design sucks. When I worked there and they were doing this "quality circles" improvement
idea thing - I had suggested turning this into a covered mall, but the idea was shot down.- it would have made things so much nicer for anyone traveling the tow
systems. The OCC is in the building at the top edge of the photo.
This station is located adjacent to the main post office, which is the building in the upper right hand corner of the photo. The end of the Jones Falls
Expwy is in the upper left hand corner, and it turns into President St. The shot tower is one of the few surviving examples of one that is from the Civil War... they
would melt lead up on the top floors of the tower, and let it drop, cooling as it went down sand forming into balls. Once picked up off the floor at the bottom, the shot
could be graded to size, or re-melted. I'll have to see if I can find my photos from the top of the tower, as very few people get the privilege to go up there.
The main PO is one of the few multi-level P&DC's (processing and distribution center), where they sort your mail - a very cool operation!
The first two fellas come from the birds eye view on
www.bing.com/maps
Johns Hopkins Hospital continuously rates as the top hospital in the U.S., and has a long and rich history in Baltimore. It is also slowly gobbling
up the land around it along with the Kennedy-Krieger Institute which is the tan building on the left in the bottom photo. If you have the time, it is a most impressive
building to come out of the hole for and take a few pictures, especially at dusk. The main entrance to the Metro is in the middle of Broadway, across from the
main domed building. I used to have rowhouse several blocks south of here, built in 1845, and was on the first streetcar line in Baltimore City.
A train that just came out of the tunnel
and is headed north towards W Cold Spring.
A train just leaving the W Cold Spring
station.
Switches, Signs, TVM's, Etc
Todd's History and Nonsense Corner of Local Baltimore Trivia
I used to live at 7 S. Broadway, and when I
re-roofed it, put a seven into the roof using black colored shingles... made it
easier to find when I was flying around. For a rowhouse, it was big, being
24ft wide (most are like, 10-12-14 feet wide), and 80 feet deep, with 3 floors,
giving me a whopping 4800 square feet. 5, 7, and 9 were built by a guy for
him and his two sons, and 9, to the right, had a really nice carriage house on
the alley. I guess he didn't like his 2nd son as much as his first,
as #5 on the left is just a tad narrower!
As cool as this house was, there are some around the Reservoir Hill, Druid Hill Park, and Baltimore Zoo area (up off of 28 Street) that are absolutely fantastic and are almost mansions compared to this.
This area was the original Jewish neighborhood of Baltimore. Yogurt Lane was named for the factory that used to be there years and years and years ago.
An old firehouse is on the very right of the picture, and it still has the two poles in it!... Very cool for getting downstairs quick.
That's Ed's black truck on the street :-)
This aerial shot is after the city did a beautification project for the street and took away all of the angle parking :-(
Many, many years ago on Fox (I think), they had a show about a Black guy with a White wife, and the building all the way to the left was used for the exterior shots of their house - it has New Orleans style iron work around the exterior decks.
Down at the "bottom" of Broadway, where it meets the Harbor, is a huge building built out over the water. When NBC was filming Homicide, they had their studio located in this building. Also located in the building, at an earlier time, was marine radio station WMH, and a customs house, as Fells Point was one of the major ports in the Baltimore area.
Up until the mid 90's, when they started a major waterfront renovation, there was a very cool three way RR switch in the street, also located in the Fells Point on Albemarle Street. Somewhere I have a pix of the thing. Penn Central used to run street freights back in the 70's, until the business' closed, and used these weird trucks with couplers mounted on them to move freight cars instead of locomotives.
NEW 06/07/2009
Last Modified 15-Sep-2017