Queen Anne's Railroad

The Queen Anne’s Railroad was a railroad that ran between Love Point, Maryland, and Lewes, Delaware during the late 19th and early 20th Century. It connected to Baltimore via ferry across the Chesapeake Bay, to Cape May, New Jersey via a ferry across the Delaware Bay and to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware via another railroad. It changed owners several times during its history. It struggled to compete with the automobile, service was cutback and sections of the railroad were abandoned. The section from Ellendale, DE to Milton, DE is owned by the state of Delaware and operated by the Maryland and Delaware Railroad, but the rest of the line is in some state of non-use, abandonment, removal or trail conversion.

The company also owned and operated the Queen Anne's Ferry & Equipment Company which consisted of the steamers Endeavor, Queen Anne and Queen Caroline.

Towns served

The following towns were served by the Queen Anne's Railroad:

• Love Point, Maryland
• Stevensville, Maryland
• Chester, Maryland
• Queenstown, Maryland
• Centreville, Maryland (via the Centreville Branch)
• Queen Anne, Maryland
• Denton, Maryland
• Hickman, Delaware
• Adamsville, Delaware
• Greenwood, Delaware
• Owens, Delaware
• Ellendale, Delaware
• Milton, Delaware
• Lewes, Delaware

An article appearing in the April 9, 1897 issue of The Morning News announcing the opening of the new railway lists the stations, in order, as Queenstown, Bloomingdale, Wye Mills, Willoughby, Queen Anne, Hillsboro, Downes, Tuckahoe, Denton, Hobbs, Hickman, Adamsville, Blanchard, and Greenwood where the line terminated while construction continued to Ellendale.

History

The Queen Anne's Railroad company was incorporated by a group of [Centreville, Maryland|Centreville]] businessmen in Maryland on February 26, 1894 and received legislative authorization from Delaware to extend its line to Lewes in February 1895. The goal of the railroad was to create a link from Baltimore to Centreville and the Atlantic Coast.

Construction began on June 27, 1895. By April of 1897 the railroad was constructed and operating between Queenstown, MD and Greenwood, DE. It was extended to Milton, DE by August 29th of that year. In 1898, service was extended to Lewes, DE. At Pilottown the tracks crossed the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal at the present day location of Queen Anne Avenue and continued to a ferry terminal that allowed passengers to transfer by ferry to Cape May, New Jersey. It also connected to the resort of Rehoboth via a line owned by the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad.

In 1899, the Queen Anne's Railroad converted a building in Rehoboth Beach at the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and Surf Avenue (now the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk) "into an elaborate welcome center for the resort visitors who used the Queen Anne's trains." This welcome center included 100 bathhouses, a 40 foot by 40 foot dance floor, bowling alley, shuffleboard, electric lights, and accommodations for 1,000 excursionists and was located one block from the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia railroad station in Rehoboth Beach that was utilized by the Queen Anne railroad after the rail lines linked in Lewes. The Queen Anne Railroad planned to construct their own rail line from Lewes to Rehoboth Beach that would have followed the beach, giving a view of the ocean and passing just beside the Great Dune at the Cape Henlopen Light, at the present day Cape Henlopen State Park.

In 1901, the rail line was extended 13-mile (21 km) west to Love Point, Maryland and north from Queenstown to Centreville. That same year, the railroad began operating a summer-only Cape May Express train between Queenstown and Lewes with a connecting steamer across the Delaware Bay to Cape May, New Jersey. At Love Point it connected to a ferry line, shortening the ferry trip to Baltimore.

The former path of the railroad is marked in blue on the 1906 map above

The Queen Anne went bankrupt in 1904.

Maryland, Delaware and Virginia Railway Company

Through a complex series of acquisitions, Queen Anne's Railroad ceased to exist and its assets became the property of the Maryland, Delaware and Virginia Railway Company (MD&V), a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, on January 27, 1905.

Into the 1920s the railroad operated trains from Love Point on the eastern Chesapeake shore town, east to Queenstown, Maryland, to Greenwood, Delaware and then to Lewes, Delaware.

In January 1924, the MD&V sold the railroad to the E. B. Leaf Company and later that year Leaf sold the western portion, from Love Point to West Denton, MD, to the Baltimore and Eastern Railroad. It sold the eastern portion, from West Denton to Lewes, to the Maryland and Delaware Coast Railroad at the same time.

Baltimore and Eastern Railroad

The nearby Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway was merged into the Baltimore and Eastern Railroad in 1928. Passenger service was terminated in 1931 and replaced by bus service and sections of the railroad were abandoned throughout the intervening years.

The Ellendale to Milton section, later the Milton Industrial Branch, was purchased in 1934 for the purpose of continuing freight service to Milton. It survived as part of Penn Central up through the Penn Central bankruptcy and ConRail merger but it was omitted from the system plan for Conrail.

The bus that started in the 1931 was gone from the schedule by 1941, as the company dropped its passenger operations.

DelDOT

When Penn Central went bankrupt, the Milton Industrial Track was sold to DelDOT. The Delaware Coast Line Railroad (DCLR) operated freight traffic on it until 1994. In 1994, when the rail line came under control of the Delaware Transit Corporation (DTC0, the Maryland and Delaware Railroad was awarded a five-year contract to operate the Milton Industrial Track between Ellendale and Milton to serve the Draper-King Cole Cannery located just east of Chestnut St in Milton. After Draper went out of business in 1999, Norfolk Southern leased the line to store grain cars on it for Purdue and operations returned to DCLR. DCLR restarted operations on the Milton Industrial Track in 2010 for use by a propane facility on the west side of Milton but the portion of track between Gravel Hill Road/MD-30 and downtown Milton was abandoned. The section from Ellendale to MD-30 is the only portion still in use. In early 2018, DelDOT decided not to renew its contract with DCLR and the Delmarva Central Railroad won the bid to take it over effective January 1, 2019.

In the 1990s, a dinner train operated on the original trackage of Queen Anne's Railroad between Lewes and Nassau, Delaware. The heritage railroad branded both its locomotives and passenger cars as "Queen Anne's Railroad," but it had no direct links to the original 1894-1905 railroad. The dinner train's center of operations was at the former Lewes, Delaware station. Passenger cars were pulled by a USATC S100 Class 0-6-0 tank locomotive, produced for the US Army in World War II.

Delaware's 2006 Rail-to-Trail and Rail with Trail Facility Master Plan included a recommendation that the Milton Industrial Spur be evaluated for a rail trail, but that was prior to use being restarted in 2010. The Milton-Lewes Line was not studied but the report notes broad opposition to its conversion, further noting that ownership of the rail corridor is unknown and appears to have reverted back to private ownership in some cases.

Remnants

The Stevensville Train Depot as it exists today

In Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the railroad right-of-way from Stevensville to Chester has been turned into part of the Cross Island Trail, a rail trail which is, in turn, part of the American Discovery Trail.

The Stevensville Train Depot remains in Historic Stevensville, MD and serves as a museum.

The railroad still legally exists between Queenstown and Queen Anne's but that track has mostly been removed. There is still a trestle over the Wye East River.

Between Queen Anne and Denton the railroad is owned by MDOT, but much of the rail has been removed. For a time in the 1990's this section was operated by the Cheseapeake Railroad. This section includes extant railroad bridges over Tuckahoe Creek and the Choptank River.

Between Denton and Ellendale the railroad has been abandoned as has the section between Milton and Lewes.

The original railroad station in Sudlersville is still in existence and serves as a museum. An 700 foot section of the rail right-of-way in Milton, DE was converted into the Milton Rail Trail in 2009 and extended west by 1600 feet, including a trestle over Ingram Branch, in June of 2020.

On the west side of Milton another trestle, over Pemberton Branch, is also extent.

A Delaware state historical marker in Milton and another in Ellendale's historic Railroad Square district commemorate the railroad.

The Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway was operating the last three D16 4-4-0 steam locomotives in 1937 when they were scheduled to be scrapped. A PRR officer noticed thus and ordered that #1223 be renovated to almost original condition. It was displayed at a number of railroad fairs in the 1930s-1950s and retired from revenue service in 1950. After being stored at a roundhouse in Northumberland, Pennsylvania for years, it was used to run excursion trains on the Strasburg Rail Road outside of Strasburg, Pennsylvania starting in 1965. In 1989 it was removed from service and put on static display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania outside of Strasburg. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. No. 1223 is the only surviving example of the Pennsylvania Railroad's D16sb class.

Other parts of the right of way have been turned into Love Point Road, US-50, other roads and utility corridors; and several culverts remain.

External links

• Queen Anne's Railroad Society (QARRS)