St. Denis Park was one of the earlier subdivisions in this area. Many of the roads and lots shown on this 1915 map were for planning, and some did not come to fruition. Rolling Road's grade separation would later follow that marked Main St.

St. Denis is not named for a saint, but rather Denis A. Smith, a landowner in this area who was involved in the collapse of the Bank of the United States. By long evading personal liability for his irregular banking he was given the moniker "Saint Denis". Legend says the actual Saint Denis (of France) was beheaded during the 3rd century.

This is a winter 1926/1927 aerial view of St. Denis.

At the left edge, the State Roads Commission will soon (1930) grade separate River Road. Not until about 1970 would MD 166 (later I-195) make a north/south run through the upper right corner of the photo. In between, where East Street meets the railroad, stands B&O's St. Denis Station. The subsequent MARC passenger shelter would be placed west of it (left).

CSX's Baltimore Terminal Subdivision ends just before we reach St. Denis station. The leftmost two tracks handle service along the Capital Subdivision, "Cap Sub," the former B&O Washington Branch, to Washington, DC. If the rightmost track is not part of the Old Main Line Subdivision here, it will be about a half mile west where this tour will follow its bends upstream along the Patapsco River. CSX 5350 and CSX 3248 wait in the distance.

Links: 1970s, 2011

This reverse-to-tour view shows the stretch west of Halethorpe before CSX moved signals and track crossovers from Halethorpe to St. Denis. As of 2020, B&O 7600 was toiling for CSX as number 8242.

With the signal and switch move imminent in 2004, CSX allowed the far track to grow weeds. Two westbound trains wait about a mile distant for an eastbound getting the green signal on the near track.

When CSX made signal and track adjustments here, they opted for concrete ties rather than the usual wood. Concrete is sometimes used with high-speed switches, such as those added here.

With concrete, track base design has come almost full circle in 200 years. In 1830, B&O's original track base here was hard, permanent granite.

Link: 2007 installation

Though CSX 832 looks to be returning coal back to the mountains, actually it was the trailing pusher on an eastbound train headed away from the camera. The new US 1 bridge spans overhead.

Link: bridge oops

When CSX decided to relocate defect detectors away from the curves at Relay, it chose this location. For clarity, CSX prefers to give such instrumentation a unique name, but location names of Relay, St. Denis, and Halethorpe were already in use. After much back and forth, the group at Jacksonville decided to name this one after Dan Zink, a long-time B&O and CSX employee who had worked on these systems and was nearing retirement. Dan could not stay away from railroading for long: he continued on as a volunteer at the B&O Museum in Baltimore and has kindly looked up obscure, historical B&O information for this site.

B&O and C&O (and later WM) joined forces as Chessie System, yet retained separate identities, as suggested by the B&O sublettering on this unit.

CSX would renumber many B&O 41xx GP40-2s into the 6000s but no records exist of a CSX 6047. B&O 4147 was last photoed in 1985.

Detour: C&O / B&O affiliation history at this site

In 2001, CSX had not yet repainted all locomotives it inherited from Conrail. As of 2023, this unit toils for the Buffalo and Pittsburgh.

Links: 1981, 1987, CSX 8743

About 2007, CSX moved signals and crossovers to here, about a mile west of their B&O-era installation at Halethorpe and HX Tower. The empty fourth signal mount on the left leaves room to handle restoration of a fourth track. This stretch has been triple tracked since the 1950s. Prior to that, a siding had dipped on the right to deliver to the Dorsey Coal Company.

Yes, CSX 4814 is leading, but this is my only photo that includes CSX 1. I didn't capture a second photo because I didn't realize CSX 1 was trailing until much later.

St. Denis Station hangs on as a quiet MARC commuter stop. There is parking room for about 20 commuters, and even that is rarely consumed. As such, it is a convenient location to change crews.

CSX 5226, 4229, 3284, 411, and 8247 lead a parade toward Baltimore.

Graffiti that's more than self-aggrandizement is ultra-rare.

Link: Dapr

This Western Maryland GP35 model has no record of being repainted into Chessie or CSX livery. CSX may have sold or retired it.

UPOZ-845211 has hitched a ride through St. Denis. UPOZ is a reporting mark of United Parcel Service. Trailers without flanged wheels are given reporting marks that end in the letter Z.

The station has two passenger waiting shacks, such as the one seen at left. St. Denis is a flag stop, which means MARC trains do not stop unless the operator knows a passenger wants to board or disembark. Low demand means MARC will likely eventually discontinue commuter service here.

Link: 2019

If somehow the traffic gets slow, you can always read the rail manufacturing IDs. This segment was made back in September 1951 at US Steel's Carnegie plant.

A mom and her son enjoy a blast of air from CSX 8622 as it passes at full speed. Before the platform's removal around 2007, it was the only place in the region one could stand between two quickly moving freight trains but a few feet apart.

Families and foamers alike know better than to stand around for trains on bitterly cold days.

This location is known for attracting railfans, including deeply serious ones, aka foamers. Most are welcoming to newbies, but be aware some are so into modern railroad details that they'll not have much to talk about with you unless you can tell them something current they do not already know.

Sadly, the same sometimes applies online, even at sites that claim to warmly welcome fellow railfans. Don't be alarmed if you get a cold shoulder, it's not uncommon. To help you avoid rude treatment, I no longer link to such sites from this one.

Links: Meet the Foamers, The Return

A caboose had been a train staple into the 1980s when various state laws requiring them were gradually phased out. One of the last holdouts with impact on CSX was Virginia that did not relax its caboose requirements until 1988.

An End-of-Train (EOT) indicator, aka Flashing Rear-End Device (FRED), example in red at right, has taken the place of a caboose. Some cabooses remain in operation as of the 2020s to provide a place for an employee to stand as lookout while an engine pushes the train from its other end.

St. Denis is a staging location for trains as they approach Baltimore. Trains frequently pause here for a few minutes, comfortably west of signals so as to not block the station. On this day, CSX 8092 and HLCX 6070 (a leased unit) idle and await instructions with their short mixed freight in tow. That's the Rolling Road overpass in the background.

MARC 16 and CSX 5226 meet under Rolling Road.

Brackets over the trains imply B&O signals had previously been affixed to the bridge. Indeed, a circa 1960 video shows at least one CPL mounted there. A later video shows it gone by 1978.

This area was relatively undeveloped circa 1900. What was probably the first grade separation bridge for Washington Boulevard (later US 1) is visible at distant left back at Halethorpe. If there had once been a wheeled vehicle grade crossing at St. Denis, it was closed by 1900.

As viewed from the Rolling Road overpass during the age of steam, four tracks passed through St. Denis. That's B&O's passenger station at the center, and the Calvert Distillery plant at distant right.

The former Calvert Distillery became part of Seagram, and later Guinness. Some of it was split off for use by Road Way Express trucking.

MD 166 (background) was new at photo time, some 20 years away from being renamed I-195. St. Denis Station would not remain in good condition much longer, and would be gone by about 1980.

Links: 1962, 1972

St. Denis Station is remembered by the small shelter just beyond the nose of the lead locomotive. B&O's wood frame station seen in the older photos above stood a bit beyond (east of) the current shelter.

Since both the OML and the Capital Subdivisions pass through here, there's plenty of traffic to watch, and the viewing is easy.

Link: more St Denis photos at this site