July 5, 2018  

Then & Now: Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station

This post is a continuation of a series of “Then & Now” images that will show photographs of buildings, street scenes, and other historical locales from Lewis Reed’s Photo Collection alongside photographs of how they appear today.

Gaithersburg B&O Train Station (THEN): The station was originally built as the Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station and Freight Shed in 1884, for the Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). A freight house, which currently houses the Gaithersburg Community Museum, allowed farmers to easily ship their products. Over the years, the station buildings gradually fell into disrepair and by the 1960’s were slated for demolition. According to the Gaithersburg city website, they were purchased by the city from the Chessie Systems in 1984 and restored. The Station and Freight House have been listed in the National Register of Historical Places since 1978.

Gaithersburg Train Station

Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station (looking north up the tracks), 1911. Photo by Lewis Reed

Gaithersburg B&O Train Station (NOW): The same view 107 years later. The station has limited hours but still serves as a ticket office for MARC train daily commuters going to and from Washington, DC. Amtrak trains rumble through Gaithersburg but this is no longer a scheduled stop on their routes. As many as 50 freight trains travel through Gaithersburg each day.

Gaithersburg B & O Railroad Station

Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station today

Source: Maryland Historical Trust

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

About Reed Brothers

I am a co-owner of the former Reed Brothers Dodge in Rockville, Maryland. Lewis Reed, the founder of Reed Brothers Dodge was my grandfather. We were a family-owned and operated car dealership in Rockville for almost a century. I served in the United States Air Force for 30 years before retiring in the top enlisted grade of Chief Master Sergeant in July 2006. In 2016, I received the Arthur M. Wagman Award for Historic Preservation Communication from Peerless Rockville for documenting the history of Reed Brothers Dodge in both blog and book format. This distinguished honor recognizes outstanding achievement by writers, educators, and historians whose work has heightened public awareness of Rockville’s architectural and cultural heritage, growth and development.

2 responses to “Then & Now: Gaithersburg B&O Railroad Station”

  1. Patrick Kernan says :

    Great pictures Jeanne.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: