A combination of productive farms and good roads made Gaithersburg a busy stop
for the railroad. Within a few years after the Met's opening, tons of fertilizer
and a hundred thousand bushels of wheat were shipping annually with help
from the B&O's brick freight house that survives in the distance. Double
tracking of the Met worked outward from DC but did not reach here until 1893.
The Baltimore, Cincinnati and Western Railroad at one time planned to stretch
from Laurel, Maryland to here, and then west, but ultimately was never built.
The rusty tracks in the foreground - disconnected from the main not long before
this photo - had served the station, and now host static railroad displays.
Links to older pics:
1978,
1991
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