In General
Map
Station by Station

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In General


The Baltimore Metro Subway system, hereafter called the Baltimore Metro system, is a simple system.  The system consists 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 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.

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.

What is above is a repeat of what is on the Metro main page, more info can be found on that page.

Acknowledgements:
Bing Maps - Aerial shots
Other pictures are by myself


Map


click here for the above map in PDF format



Station by Station

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


Owings Mills

Owings Mills is the current north end of the line, and will probably remain that way since there is much fuss over extending the line any further north, mostly because of added value vs cost.  Since all of the at or above ground stations are not really located near much of anything useful, they all have parking facilities and bus lanes.


Above, Baltimore is to the right, along with the double set of crossovers (far right), allowing trains from either mainline track to use either station track.  This is normal practice for almost every Metro/subway system at the end of a line unless they have a loop.






The storage tracks in between the rush hours, the parking lot gives it away.



    Coming down on the southbound side of 795, you get these views of the tracks used for storage during the non-rush hours.  SEP2010



 

Above 3 pictures: This NB train is getting ready to enter the Owings Mills station.  Notice the train has switched over to the SB track for entering the station, having just passed the crossovers and a set of signals.  SEP2010

It is doubtful that the MTA will ever extend the Metro north of here, but hey, you never know if the population density get like that of NYC (New York City) (Let's hope it doesn't!  :-)



Old Court

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 facility.





                 

 

  What you can see as you go over the SB 795 to EB 695 interchange



 



Milford Mill

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.





Reisterstown Plaza

The former end of the line for the Phase 1 section.





Rogers Ave





The Heavy Rail Shops



West Cold Spring Lane



Into The Tunnel



Mondawmin



Penn North



Upton

Amtrak passes by here, but there is no connection to the trains.  Not a good railfan area!





State Center / Cultural Center



Lexington Market

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 light rail/metro 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/temperature controlled mall, but the idea was shot down.  It would have made things so much nicer for anyone traveling between the two systems.  The OCC is in the building at the top edge of the photo.





Charles Center



   



Shot Tower / Market Place

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!





Johns Hopkins Hospital

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.





























 

   



Pictures



These two aerial views come from the birds eye view on Bing Maps.
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.





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, myindexa 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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