Stone piers from the trolley's bridge over the Patapsco are easily spotted from the north side of the current road bridge. The bridge atop these piers was of steel construction and single tracked. Other parts of the trolley line were double tracked.

As a reference point, the B&O's Ellicott City station is less than 200 feet away at my back.

Links to older pictures: ~1920, 1955, at Oliver Viaduct 1955, view at end in 1955, east on Main St. in 1955

Oella Avenue squeezes between two of the piers on the Baltimore County side of the river.

Link: 1910 looking slightly left

The trail is marked with this sign (spell checker please!) at the Ellicott City end.

The winding Westchester Avenue is carried over the trolley's excavation by means of a rickety looking bridge.

A picture of the trolley in operation at this spot can be found on page 136 of Joetta Cramm's book Howard County A Pictorial History. This excellent book contains many other historical pictures of the area up and down the Patapsco River that the B&O's Old Main Line follows.

Link: view east from bridge in 1955

The stone column at left stops well below the current Westchester Avenue bridge. Perhaps a bridge of a different design once spanned the cut, or the column supported the overhead catenary of the trolley.

Some of the cables that supported the trolley's electrical service can still be found hanging from the rocks above the trail.

Link to trolley picture: ~1910?

Though it was made 70 years after the B&O had been excavating rock, even in the 1890s such cuts were tough work. This one was "the straw that bankrupted" the Columbia and Maryland Railway owners.

The path can get muddy here, hence the wooden platform / walkway. The white objects on the hill at left are a fence that appears to mark the edge of private property.

I'm not sure if the stone seen in the lower right foreground has any particular significance (i.e. if it is a trolley line artifact).

Link to older picture: 1890s

This shallow stone arched bridge still carries the right-of-way over the Cooper Branch, the stream seen here. The bridge, now over a century old, is looking a little weary and showing signs of giving in to gravity.

The builders took an interesting approach here. Rather than construct two bridges to span a tiny bend of the Cooper Branch, they cut through the rock to create a new, shorter flowpath for the stream. This trick seems to have been a success, the only notable drawback being soft, muddy ground where the stream had been originally.

This bridge is the shape a standard curved arch, and seems to have stood up better than the other, more shallow arch seen above. The bright, clean mortar in places gives evidence of some reconstruction or patching.

The trail continues east to here at the intersection of Edmondson Avenue and Chalfonte Road in Catonsville. I found no interesting trolley artifacts, but unfortunately I did observe plenty of dog droppings as the locals at this end of the trail ignore the signage and walk their pets here. Speaking of locals, their preferred term for the trolley was "streetcar".

Where the trail ends, Edmondson Avenue picks up to help us follow the trolley's path. Just east of Old Frederick Road, a green catenary pole is forgotten but not gone. Despite what Neil Young says, perhaps rust does sleep.

Another possibility is this pole is not a trolley artifact, but perhaps a gas line vent. Anyone with more definitive info?

For the final 9 months of its life (until June 19, 1955), the #9 streecar operated as a shuttle between Ellicott City and here at Catonsville Junction, where until 1939 it had met line #8. As the current road layout suggests, a trolley loop had been added here in 1939.

Links to older pictures: ~1950, 1955, 1950s, resident memories

Thought it has gone more than a half century without purpose, what may be another green catenary pole remains standing just west of Delrey Road. Note also on the right the small street parallel to Edmondson Avenue. Such parallel streets are also trolley remnants. At distant left, crossing over Edmondson is I-695, the Baltimore Beltway.