No surviving traces B&O's Halpine station at milepost 14 were found. Twinbrook Parkway is the next overpass, but before that shrouded on the left an old acquaintance, the DC Metro Red Line, rises from the subterranean to rock and roll alongside.

As foretold, Metro appears... it's on the right because we're looking back from the Edmonston Drive bridge to a pair of headlights departing Twinbrook Metro station, over a mile distant.

The Edmonston Drive bridge was new in 1947 when EL Thompson spotted B&O 74 EMD model E7A bound for Washington.

Click the thumbnail to peer into the distance and you'll find a bridge with a pyramidal support structure.

Sixty years of highway expansion in the DC-to-Frederick corridor boosted Rockville's skyline changes, and brought Metro which subdivided the B&O right-of-way into halves.

The pyramidal structure remains extant, peeking above the bridge for Veirs Mill Road in the foreground.

This unusual bridge has been sparsely documented. One source reporta a pedestrian bridge to Rockville Station has existed in this vicinity since the late 1800s, but another suggests the bridge was added only after a 1936 collision between train and school bus at the Baltimore Road grade crossing. After that bridge collapsed, supposedly it was converted into this pedestrian bridge in 1974. Who knows the real story?

CSX, Metro, MARC and Amtrak all roll through here, with good views of the action from the pyramid bridge. The B&O's Rockville Station is shrouded by trees on the left.

This is basically the same view as the prior photo, though from ground level, and before about a century of change. The E. Francis Baldwin-designed station dates to the 1873 opening of the Metropolitan Branch. About the time of this photo, the passing siding here was the longest on the branch.

The wooden boards parallel to and outside the rails reduce the trip hazard the ties present to passengers.

Link to older pic: ~1900

The oldest survivor on the line, Rockville Station spent its final decade at this spot as an Amtrak station.

Links to older pics: 1978, 1978

This Baldwin-designed station is virtually identical to the one in Silver Spring, though the layout is mirrored.

Link: Ephraim Francis Baldwin

To make room for Metro, in 1981 the station and associated freight house were picked up, moved about 200 feet south, and rotated almost 180 degrees clockwise before being set down on new foundations. Workers in the law offices now housed inside can watch Metro and CSX action in their backyard, while on break of course.

Link to older pic: 1981 move

A collection of aging equipment boxes lines the tracks near what remains of the passing siding upon which, on this day, several Maintenance-of-Way machines rest. Unity Bridge opened in 1999 for pedestrian use.

From Unity Bridge we can spy the western limit of the siding. On the left Hungerford Drive traces the eastern edge of the Rockville Campus of Montgomery College so students can drag race Metro.

Suburban Propane is one of CSX's active customers here. The special bays facilitate tanker offloading.

Ack! The railroad was supposed to put engine 1919 in the lead. Heads will roll.

Link: CSX 1919

Representative of the B&O's smaller stations / depots was this one at Derwood, which a B&O schedule places at mile 19. The station survived until razed by fire in 1954; all artifacts of it were erased when Metro overlaid the site in the 1980s.

The grade crossing in the photo has been eliminated, but was what is now Paramount Drive / Chieftain Avenue.

Link: Short History of Derwood

Eastbound at Redland Road, over a mile of autoracks give new cars their first miles, without it showing on their speedometers. CSX 7515 is a GM model C40-8, colloquially known as "Dash 8", built May 1989.

Meanwhile, a distant CPL watches mirage-like at the crossovers despite the summer afternoon heat. Unseen on the left, Metro's Shady Grove station terminates the Red Line.

Three signals with a similar sense of duty keep the first CPL company. A siding splits off on the left, then splits a few more times... perhaps there are some trains over thataway.

Sure enough: not only trains (CSX 8528) but also containers pausing from piggybacking. The yard's B&O rail hardware with 1930s and 1940s dates is reused from other locations.

Some of the containers are used by Montgomery County's Shady Grove Transfer Station to send trash west to the Dickerson Generating Station seen later in this tour.

If you've been following the tour, you know where another of these US&S signals can be found: at the exit of the now-disused Georgetown Branch.

The purple switch flag is a new one on me. Based on closeup photos it does not appear to be faded from a different color.

A then-new Brandt Rail Tool, number HBC 200802, is hardly working after working hard on the newest bridge over the Met (next photo).

Via the rubber grouser pads the Rail Tool can climb up, down and all around the rails, while a variety of attachments make it a versatile machine. Looks like fun; I want one. This particular attachment reminds me of a fiddler crab.

Link: fiddler crab waving

CSX 359 carts a short mixed freight below construction of the newest bridge over the Met, that for MD 200, the Intercounty Connector toll road that opened March 2011. Formerly, narrower bridges had carried I-370 over the tracks here.

Link: MD 200

A doubledecker of DC-bound Amtrak passengers rumbles across Railroad Street (wonder how they came up with that name). This is the first grade crossing in the past 7 miles of the tour; they become more common as the Met tracks further from densely populated areas. Note the array of crossing signals to match the complex intersection. Squint into the distance to find the same MD 200 as in the prior photo.

In 1906 this Washington Grove Station replaced the original depot building. Note the USPS mailbox, a fixture at railroad stations during the steam age. The station survived until 1958.

Link to pics: ~1958, 1986, 1986

Near the site of the B&O's depot and station, yet more diminutive than both, now stands this MARC commuter waiting shack. The fate of the humpback bridge in the distance may change this structure yet again.

Washington Grove was established in 1873 as a Methodist religious retreat camp. In 1951 a dog caused a work train to derail here, and the legal case eventually found its way to the Supreme Court.

Links: Wikipedia, 1951 derailment

Even with a hump this bridge is about 2 feet too low for the double-stack trains scheduled to soon ply the Met. The bridge is newer than its timber supports imply, having been rebuilt in 1988 to copy the original 1947 form. The locals have grown fond of the quirky bridge and do not want CSX to remove it.

Links: news report, history

Though the humpback's roadway is wide enough for opposing traffic, the visibility is poor, so an uncommon system of traffic signals limits access to one travel direction at a time. Getting over the hump must be a challenge during winter ice and snow.

When Robert Herbert wanted the perfect office, he found Missouri Pacific caboose 13577 in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. After several months and several thousand dollars, the 1972-built unit arrived in Gaithersburg.

Links: Missouri Pacific info, news report