Forward
The Solomons and Patuxent Railroad (the S&P) is an HO scale fictional short line operating between the villages of Solomons and Owings in Calvert County, Maryland. The right-of-way follows the real-world graded path of the never-completed Baltimore and Drum Point Railroad for most of its 30 or so miles through the county. It is a country railroad serving rural people, businesses, and industries in the Great Depression month of October 1936.
Calvert County in 1936 had only two paved roads. One, Solomons Island Road (present day MD Rt. 2), ran the full length of the county from Owings to Solomons, following the ridge that divides the watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay to the East and the Patuxent River to the West . The second, MD Rt. 416 (present day MD Rt. 4), was an extension of Pennsylvania Ave. from Washington D.C. through Prince Georges and Anne Arundel counties entering Calvert County when it crossed Lyons Creek, and meeting MD Rt. 2 just south of Sunderland. Transportation of goods and people was performed primarily by Weems Line steamboats out of Baltimore which stopped at wharves and landings of communities on both the bay and river in a long two-day round trip. This was the predominent means of transport until its general decline after the damage caused by the 1933 hurricane.
There was already one railroad in Calvert County, the Chesapeake Beach Railway, which ran between Seat Pleasant, Md. (a suburb of Washington, DC) and Chesapeake Beach, Md. - a resort and amusement park on the western shore of the bay. Neither the railroad nor Chesapeake Beach ever attained the lofty dreams of it founders. The CB Rwy ceased operations in 1935, one year before the time period modeled.
The
S&P, however,
rewrites this history.
Incorporation
of Maryland businesses in 1904
required an Act of the Maryland General Assembly. The S&P's
charter was no
exception.
These web pages, and the layout
are both
under continuing development. As new information is
developed,
these pages are subject to revisions and additions. Stop back.