Hurricane Agnes Damage to PC Branchlines...

Tropical Storm Agnes did a lot of damage back in 1972.  There are still bridges that were never repaired or replaced.  Many businesses were destroyed.

Here is what I know in regards to Walkersville Southern just outside of Frederick MD on the old PRR Frederick Secondary. The bridge over the Monacacy River, about 2/2.5 miles north of Frederick was wiped out by Agnes. There is one industry just north of the bridge but I'm not sure if it existed in 1972. It does have a siding that may see rail freight again someday. 

The bridge wiped out  the line obviously. Since business was non-existent, or close to it, in and around Frederick at the time, it didn't make sense to rebuild the bridge and the Cargill Factory in Walkersville was still served but the trains didn't go south of W'ville. The State of Maryland acquired the tracks and, with MARC service running to Frederick, the idea was, with the tremendous growth in the Walkersville area and development of farms in the area of the RR, to run MARC service up north towards Walkersville so the bridge was rebuilt while WS used it. MARC service never happened and is unlikely to ever happen so WS runs the line down to Rt. 26 outside of Frederick. 

There are a few other WS folks that lurk on the forum so perhaps they could fill in the gaps. See www.wsrr.org for more info. Also, pictures of the bridge reconstruction can be seen in THIS video.  Below is photo of train crossing bridge

The B&O's Georgetown Branch from the Metropolitan Sub to Georgetown in DC also had the massive trestle over Rock Creek washed out. The B&O's original idea of the branch being a link to Virginia and the south didn't work out as planned but still served a long life with local freight in and around Georgetown and the suburbs. Business was slowing down at the time but Agnes wiped out the bridge while leaving at least one engine and some freight cars stranded in Georgetown so rebuild it was. It still served freight for about another 10 years and a few steam specials by the John Bull. A great website from Ben Sullivan can be found HERE with terrific prototype photos including the bridge damage and rebuilding. Today the line is a trail. 

...........blaming Agnes.

yeah, Agnes was a pip! I would suggest you do some light research on Agnes before carry forth to far! I managed to live thru both Agnes and Camille. Afterward, I saw things I hope and pray never have to look at again!!!! I will pass this along to you. I was working in Carlisle, PA and living in Mechanicsburg during Agnes. My then father in law was working at 3 mile Island and lived in Steelton in a mobile home. The fire dept came to rescue him. The front of the trailer was about 4 feet off the ground. the fire dept brought their boat even with the door to get in! The Water level in the trailer was even with the top of the mattress! 

I had a trainee who lived in a 3rd floor apt on Front St in Harrisburg. HE LOST EVERYTHING HE OWNED in Agnes! We could not find him for 3-4 days! 

Oh, it took almost a week for my father in law to find a place to cross over to the west side of the Susie Q and find a working telephone! 

So, yeah, I think maybe Agnes was a "good excuse"! The damage was huge and extensive to all infrastructure and there was just not enough $$$'s to go around. Many repairs were put off. Hey, just the clean up alone took months! 

If interested, a book worth seeking is "The Wrath of Agnes", by Carl Romanelli and William Griffith, published by Media Affiliates, Wilkes-Barre, PA.  It is an eye-opener.

Thanks for the info.  I never meant to indicate anything about the strength of Agnes.  I was not arguing that point.  Entire businesses burn the the ground these days are a built right back though.

Agnes water and damage was significant in Western PA.  I was married about that time, many years ago, returning from our Honeymoon, the devastation was dramatic to say the least.   Even with all the western PA dam and flood control. 

Some believed the relatively new Kinzua Dam, upper Allegheny River, would fail, but it didn't. 

Mike:

You have to take into consideration the reality of the northeastern railroad "world" in 1972.  Penn Central had been in bankruptcy for about two years. They were bleeding money like there was no tomorrow.  Business levels had dramatically dropped off.  When Agnes hit, there simply wasn't a business justification (or cash) to rebuild many of the secondary mains and branch lines that were so severely damaged. 

Paperboys:

I'm with you on Agnes.  I was living in Lewistown, PA at the time and was stranded at work when flooding on a tributary of the Juniata closed all the bridges between the grocery store where I worked and my parents house.  I had to stay in town with my grandmother.  I remember walking to the old Juniata River bridge from town over to Lewistown Junction on the morning the river crested at about 42 or 44 feet.  I watched as a mobile home floated down the river and struck the bridge.  It kept bouncing off and then hitting again.  Each time it hit the bridge it broke up a bit more until it completely disappeared into a trail of debris streaming out the downriver side of the bridge.

My grandparents had a summer house along the river and they had over two feet of water in there and couldn't move back in again until the summer of 1973.  My dad had a local volunteer fire company come to assist with the clean up.  We had removed all the appliances, furniture, beds and what have you and discarded them in a pile in the driveway.  The firemen turned their hose on at the front door and simply went room to room flushing everything toward the back door.

Curt

A reported 12 inches of rain in one hour in West Chester Pa wiped out the valley all the way to Chester forcing two branch lines into abandonment.  Upstate Pa faired much worse.

All gates of the massive Route 1 Conowingo Dam were raised for the first time.  Two of the score of gates were stuck due to never having been ever raised.

It seemed like houses and forests were being flushed downstream.  Boating for small craft in the upper Cheseapeake was just about impossible for quite awhile.

In some areas waters were 30' above flood stage, total devastation.

Somewhere around here I have the post-Agnes PC employee magazine. The cover photo is a demolished bridge with two broken diesels flung half off it. Put that amount of destruction over hundreds of miles, and the bill is too big for a railroad to handle when it's already dying.

Agnes, unlike Sandy, Katrina or Ivan, was "only" at tropical storm forcewhen it slid onshore. It wasn't wind damage--it was an almost stationary storm and buckets of rain for a solid week. We weren't supposed to get damage here from two and a half inches of rain, but hardly anyone seemed to understand that the water upstream had to go down the Ohio at some point. Our "Agnes not expected to cause local flooding" newspaper was delivered by two boys in a boat. While the water wasn't in our house, it did close our road, and the local Pennsy tracks, for several days.

Hurricane Juan was another massively destructive storm for railroads. Chessie abandoned the B&O Old Main from about Mannigton to Fairmont because of it. That actually might have been an excuse to get rid of local lines, but southeast of us the destruction was unreal. 

Ivan hit the coast as a Cat 4 and was still a category 2 when it got to our area. We were delayed in evacuating because the elderly neighbor wanted me to come over and put things away in her basement. I begged her to get out and finally had to hang up on her. We got out just as water hit th back wheels of our car in the low spot. As it turned out, we'd have been all right in the house had we stayed, but we wouldn't have had power or water for a while. The landslides have almost all been fixed on major roads, a lot of the damaged back roads were abandoned, and several small businesses went under. We saw horrific damage in the 1990 flash flood, but to see it over a huge area was surreal.

Mike

I had asked some one the same question and the reply was PC has over 1500 washouts and really did put them and others out of business. it was a great excuse to abandon all of these lines. I don't know if it was bridges or bridges and low lying track that got washed out.

As SJC note Walkersville lost the blue portion of the bridge in the photo and the pier which there standing on. The rusted portion of the bridge was OK. That portion is just now getting worked on this year almost 45 years after the flood. So you can see how much one of these wash outs would cost. I believe FEMA would fund the rebuilds but they chose to shut down instead.

Adjacent to WSRR there were two other bridges washed out. the one in City of Fredrick, which was never replaced although the piers were rebuilt to do it. and up towards Taneytown was washed out and never replaced. The MIDD uses the old Western Maryland line south of that point to service the area. York rail serves north of the washout.

To the North, The Northern Central was destroyed. it was rebuilt only as a single track line. not the double track it was. I don't know what happened to the bridge crossing the Susquehanna in Columbia, PA. That was our terminal point into the PRR main line.

Jamie

I remember reading in one of my books, about a city in Pennsylvania that was served by three railroads, (PC, and maybe the LV and CNJ?).  The problem was the whole town only originated and terminated about 10 car loads per day, so after Agnes destroyed much of the trackage, it just made sense to abandon two out of the three lines, something the railroads wouldn't have been able to do because of the ICC otherwise.

Thanks.  I figured it was a combination of a lot of factors.  Its like the landlord who wants to replace his building with something nicer but the tenants still have 2 years on a lease.  Then comes the fire or tornado.