Maryland and Pennsylvania Terminal Railroad

The Maryland and Pennsylvania Terminal Railroad is a route for Trainz Simulator 2012 by Ted Thompson (aka frogpipe). It makes use of a number of special assets on the Download Station. These include reskinned locomotives, rolling stock, buildings, and track as well as original models created by Ted Thompson of the Baltimore passenger station and Baltimore freight depot.

The mainline track route is accurate and based on scaled maps. Sidings were adapted to fit Trainz geometry, while the roads are close to their original alignments. The terrain is hand shaped and does not make use of "DEM" terrain.

Background

Prototype

The Maryland and Pennsylvania Terminal Railroad was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad responsible for the switching and hosteling operations in Baltimore, including freight movements to the Homeland siding. It was formed shortly after the railroad in 1901 and continued operations until 1958 when the Maryland division was abandoned.

Trainz Route

The Trainz route is the result of several months work and could not have been made were it not for considerable historical mapping, the Maryland and Pennsylvania Historical Society, and large number of assets produced by and for members of the Trainz online community.

The route is set in 1947 and covers the first 5 miles of the "Ma and Pa". This allows for the simulation of various operations at the Baltimore end of the Maryland division. It includes 4 Passenger stations, interchange tracks with neighboring Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad, and 5 freight destinations along the line.

Typical Operations

Passenger Trains

Typical passenger operations involved short trains of a locomotive, baggage car, and coach until the 1930s when M&Pa obtained diesel electric "doodlebugs" and began running them with a trailing baggage car. In the Doodlebug days #6, a 4-4-0, was kept around for times when the doodlebugs were out of service. In earlier times, 4-4-0s and 4-6-0s would head up passenger consists.

A southbound train would arrive at the Baltimore station, where the Terminal Railroad would take over. A switcher would come and "pick off" the rolling stock, taking it up north (most likly to the tracks in front of the freight terminal) where they would rearrange the cars and/or turn them as needed to build a north bound consist.

Meanwhile, if the locomotive that just came from the north was a steam engine, it would be backed up to the coal station to be refilled. Then taken to the round house where the ash would be emptied and water taken on before parking the locomotive in the roundhouse for servicing.

The Doodlebug would be taken to be refueled and then parked in the roundhouse for servicing, as would any of the Diesel switchers.

Freight Trains

Freight trains would be assembled in the Baltimore yard using mostly native M&Pa rolling stock.

M&Pa tried to keep foreign rolling stock off it's tracks as much as possible due to the fees that they would have to pay the rolling stock's owners. To that end, all (or nearly all) foreign box cars would be unloaded at the Baltimore depot and the cargo transferred to M&Pa box cars. Meanwhile M&Pa boxcars, which were so old that they were illegal on other lines, had to be unloaded and their cargo transferred to foreign boxcars for all outbound shipments.

The same rules applied to coal cars, foreign cars were unloaded into the Engine Coaling Station and native gondolas were filled and taken to various customers along the M&Pa route.

Photo's show that this didn't always happen, but it happened most of the time.

Online Customers

• Potomac Coal
• Potts and Callahan
• O'Shay Lumber
• Geeson Coal