CUMBERLAND, Md. — Western Maryland Scenic Railroad 2-6-6-2 No. 1309 is slated to return to operation beginning May 3, powering “Frostburg Flyer” excursions on Saturday and Sundays, the railroad said in an email to customers on Tuesday (April 8, 2025).
Plans also call for the locomotive, built by Baldwin in 1949 for the Chesapeake & Ohio, to operate on Friday evening “Sunset on the Mountain” trips.
Information and tickets for the Frostburg Flyer are available here, and for Sunset on the Mountain are available here.
No. 1309 was sidelined for the 2024 season for work that had been anticipated since it first was restored to service in 2021, but was moved up based on operations in December 2023. The railroad had said in an update earlier this year that it was nearing completion of the work on pistons and running gear, among other items [see “Western Maryland Scenic No. 1309 nears reassembly,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 22, 2025].
Too bad they didn’t restore the old C&O “hoot owl” whistle that it came out of retirement with. That really brought it back to a time that exemplified the type of locomotives the C&O ran in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia and points south. Guess that old whistle wasn’t high tech enough for todays modern tourists…
Remember that the mejestic “Maryland Thunder” is one of only two surviving H-6’s, the other of which is Chesapeake and Ohio 1308, which is on static display at the Collis Potter Huntington Railroad Historical Society.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün