Since the time of this photo, most (all?) B&O-era CPL signals along the Met have been replaced by CSX in-line color-light signals. The Fort Totten Metro station lurks up ahead.

A B&O Form 6 Station List of 1917 puts Terra Cotta Station in this vicinity, along with the National Terra Cotta Works (Thos. Somerville Co.) and Washington Silicate Brick Co. As of 2022, Aggregate Industries still distributes bulk minerals here. The B&O station was located about 1000 feet south of the Fort Totten Metro stop.

This location is remembered by a Bowie Railroad Museum display (right) for a horrific accident during 1906.

When this had been a grade crossing, one would have found B&O's Chillum Station here. Since photo time, this bridge has been modified to support more tracks above and more lanes below.

The bridge that carries New Hampshire Avenue has also received a recent facelift. The original grade separation here dates to 1934 and has been dedicated the Charles A. Langley bridge.

Immediately ahead is where Metro in June 2009 experienced its deadliest accident, one that occured when a DC bound Metro train struck another that had stopped. Anticlimbers were insufficient to prevent one car from plowing into and above another.

Links: NTSB accident photo, accident info

By contrast, the Kansas Avenue bridge has not yet received the 21st century makeover. Before a whitewash, the metal sign at center displayed CSX; behind it may lurk a B&O herald. The other side of this bridge has neither CSX sign nor herald.

I assume these bridges were widened during the 1970s for Metro. It could be the center part is ex-B&O, now used by Metro, with 1970s additions on both sides, now used by CSX. The next two photos look from the rails.

This was the line's appearance about 10 years before Metro barged in. The digits on the pole at left tell us that is the 40th pole of mile 5. This stretch looks to have 60 poles per mile, which places that pole 40/60ths (2/3rds) of a mile west of milepost 5.

By photo time, B&O's Lamond Station was no longer extant here, but its Takoma Park Station could be glimpsed about a half mile ahead.

This is the view at roughly the same spot 50-some years later. The tall buildings are over a mile distant in Silver Spring.

Signals guard track crossovers. Crossovers exist between most, if not all, Metro stations. Unlike here, where room is limited the crossovers take the shape of the letter X. Along each outer side CSX gets one track, presumably so they can serve freight customers on both sides without crossing Metro.

This bridge from 1926 probably endured until Metro arrived during the 1970s.

Yes, DC does have some streets not named for states or Presidents, such as Aspen Street at milepost 6. That's Metro's Takoma Park station in the distance. B&O's station was slightly closer.

Dome Gas's 23-cent slogan was "It's Better". It appears the gas station refilled its fuel via gravity from tank car HSWX 726 on a siding above.

This photo also gives us 23 cents worth of B&O Takoma Park Station in the background.

Link: 1921, LoC source photo

A population of civil servants during the first half of the 20th century made Takoma Park DC's "first suburb". Many commuted to their government jobs via this B&O station that had stood at the intersection of Cedar, 4th and Blair since 1886. It appears some arrived by bicycle.

Links: station ~1940, Takoma Park history (PDF)

The open area for freight was enclosed some time after the prior photo.

Links: before grade separation, Historic Takoma

A Washington-bound train is led by an EMD model E7A.

Cedar Street was grade separated during 1911. Passengers continued to arrive and depart via train for about another 40 years, after which the station was allowed to deteriorate. A fire destroyed the building in 1967.

Relative to B&O's station, the Red Line's Takoma Metro Station sits on the other (north) side of Cedar Street. The four tracks diverge to make room for the station within their center, and that means these bridges date to the 1970s when Metro was constructed here.

B&O's station had been on the opposite side of the tracks at the left side of this photo.

Before Metro, a distingished marker announced the boundary between Maryland and the District of Columbia, as illustrated by the photo linked below (link broken - hoping for a replacement). Now this rail post makes a poor substitute. When rails like this are employed as mile markers, the flat surface (bottom of the rail) is turned to face the tracks.

Link: ~1948

DC-bound passengers roll from Silver Spring to Tacoma Park on a sunny summer morning.

Though numbered just one higher than a diesel engine above, obviously the two motive units are from different series.

Link: Number 1422 in 1926 Illinois flood

A six-car Red Line passenger train scoots under Montgomery College's pedestrian overpass. The addition of Metro removed and/or obscured B&O artifacts that might have lingered, such as North Takoma Station that had been here.

The pedestrian overpass is a nice spot from which to look both back...

...and ahead. Note two different styles of milepost 7 markers outside the tracks at left and right.

Put a Metro stop just outside the height restrictions of DC and you get buildings that grow tall. Most of those seen here were raised up after 1990, but not the tiny brick structure at center, that's the restored B&O Silver Spring station.

There is much railroad history to see in Silver Spring.

In 1873, B&O marked its arrival in Silver Spring with laying of tracks across Brookeville Road, later Brookeville Turnpike and now Georgia Avenue (MD 97). This photo dates from the sleepy and bucolic half century before in 1922 the Woodside Development Corporation purchased adjacent Alton Farm and divided it into 1-acre residential sites. That initiated almost non-stop development and re-development that transformed Silver Spring into a bustling economic, business, and transportation hub.

B&O's original Silver Spring station is at distant right; more about it later. The pole is topped by a semaphore-type signal (magnified at right) the shape and lenses of which no doubt inspired the design of color-position light signals that would follow. At right is an octagonal concrete phone shack, very few of which survive. One is extant at Avalon on the Old Main Line.

Note the crossing is with a dirt road, a sharp contrast to the multi-lane, busy road that exists today.

The photographer's location and view here are very close to that of the prior photo, but the area's appearance has changed so drastically as to be unrecognizable as the same spot.

A B&O Silver Spring station remains at the distant right; though now in a 1940s "modernized" form, it sits upon the same foundation as the original station of the prior photo. Georgia Avenue, grade separated in 1926, is now 6 lanes that speed -or traffic jam- under the bridge.

Link: ~1950

The road has not yet been paved, but at least the place is not deserted: one person walks at left. With the B&O station unseen on the left, presumably more people strolled about when trains arrived. The tracks on right belong to the Washington, Woodside and Forest Glen Railway Power Company, aka the Forest Glen trolley. From 1895 to 1924 the line operated along Georgia Avenue from Eastern Avenue to the National Park Seminary in Forest Glen (seen later in this tour).

Various accounts list the trolley as having its own Silver Spring station, which could be the substantial brick structure at center right, but since trolleys were never especially well-funded, might just as well be the shack at center. Anyone know? Near the shack note what appears to be a stop/go signal for the trolley.