Western Maryland Railway
defunct American Class I railway
The Western Maryland Railway (reporting mark WM), nicknamed the Wild Mary, was a small American Class I railroad that operated from 1852 to 1983 in 3 Mid-Atlantic States, Maryland (Western Region), West Virginia (Eastern Region), and Pennsylvania (Southern Region) across the Allegheny Regions of the Appalachian Mountains with its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland. The Wild Mary was primarily a coal hauling and heavy freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation up until 1958 when the WM discontinued all of its passenger service.
The WM later became property of the Chessie System holding company along with the B&O and C&O in 1973. Although despite being a holding company the Chessie System allowed the WM to continue independent operations up until May 1975 after which many of its lines were largely abandoned in favor of parallel Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) lines.
In 1983, the WM was fully merged into the B&O, which later was also merged with the former Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) into the Chessie System in 1987. The Chessie System then merged with the Seaboard System to form CSX Transportation later that year.
History
19th century
The original main line began with the chartering of the Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick Railroad in 1852, with the intent of building a rail line from Baltimore west to Washington County, Maryland. The Maryland General Assembly changed the name of the company to the Western Maryland Rail Road Company in 1853, and construction began from Owings Mills in 1857. An existing Northern Central Railway branch line terminating at Owings Mills was used to connect into Baltimore.
The railroad was completed to Westminster in 1861 and Union Bridge in 1862.
“Western Maryland Railway” enters the record as defunct American Class I railway. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Western, Maryland and Railway can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q504423. VIAF identifies the subject as 267551228. The Library of Congress control number is n81068885. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1852, 1983, 1958 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Western Maryland Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.