I have the NE edition of SPV's Railroad Atlas that I was thumbing through with my Father-In-Law earlier this evening and came across something puzzling.
I am aware of the area that appears to have a wye but if you look at the map and follow the abandoned line east towards Bombay Hook on the PWB (Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore RR) there is a stop in Smyrna.

Would any trace of this line still exist such as a roadbed, telegraph poles, relay boxes or anything?
More importantly, where did this line cross where Rt. 13 and Rt. 1 now stand? I think I know where the Station stands or did stand but I cannot seem to find any trace of a railbed. Would it have been obliterated upon construction of the town? The town is just as old if not OLDER than the railroad with the exception of the car dealerships, the 7-11, gas stations, eateries, stores and so on and so forth that stretch Rt. 13.

Just curious. Does any resembling factor still exist?

Ask, and ye shall receive, even if it's not quite on topic for this forum:

Mr. Mitchell,

Happily, I had already begun mapping the Baltimore & Delaware Bay in Google Earth before receiving your email.

The first thing to be aware of is that there are still some small
inaccuracies in the SPV atlas. The line did not bifurcate on the way from
Smyrna to Delaware Bay; the line only ran to Woodland Beach and not to
Bombay Hook landing, at the mouth of the Duck Creeks. (I suspect that got picked out of this rather inaccurate 1913 road map:
<URL:http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/GLOUCESTER_COUNTY/Cumb_Glou_Sal_1913.jpg>)
Futhermore, the mapping of lines on the other side of the peninsula is a bit
off; the map on p. 87 in "Trail of the Blue Comet" shows things properly.

That established, Chris Baer is certainly the authority on the corporate
machinations behind the line (work of Jay Gould et al.), and has described
them in "Trail of the Blue Comet" and in his PRR chronologies. Some years
back, I corresponded with Tom Gears on the subject, and he went to both
Woodland Beach and Bay Side and took some photos. I also wrote up a
chronology on the basis of Chris Baer's work, which Tom put online. His page on the railroad is at
<URL:http://www.forgottendelaware.com/bombay/woodland.html>.

The remains at Woodland Beach are difficult to interpret. The coastline
there has changed considerably over the years, and the rail grades at the
north end are intermingled with those of the old road to the beach; both
have been cut off by the breaching of the marshes between Delaware Bay and Duck Creek, which has created extensive flats. I am not sure whether
the pilings photographed in fact represent the railroad pier. Dudley Cammet Lunt, in "Taylor's Gut: In the Delaware State" writes of a duck-hunting trip on Woodland Beach Marsh in which the outboard of his boat unexpectedly jammed on an old railroad spike from the B&DB. He does speak of the railroad pilings being visible in Pierson's Cove.

To draw somewhat closer to answering the original question, I have thrown up a web page at <URL:http://www.stwing.org/~choess/railroads/bdb.html> with
some links to old aerial photos and a KMZ file (for Google Maps or Google
Earth) which plots the location of the B&DB. I have plotted the line from
Massey to Woodland Beach with reasonable certainty, except that I'm not
quite sure where it crossed the Smyrna Branch. I know it left Smyrna on
Glenwood Ave and approached the junction at Clayton between Delaware and Smyrna Avenues. The original B&DB passenger station lay about at the junction of Smyrna and Basset. The plot of the Nicholson Branch (Worton to Earl Nicholson Road) is rather more conjectural, although I fancy I see enough traces on Google Earth to have it more or less right. I have not tried to draw the line from Chestertown to Parsons via Vickers, for which I have insufficient data to really determine the course.

As you can see from the older aerials linked on my page, the B&DB appears to have crossed 1 and 13 in the vicinity of Baldwin Drive and East North Street, respectively. (East Glenwood once ended at North Main, at which point the B&DB began to curve away -- this from Sanborn maps, which unfortunately lack the detail to confirm the station site.) Finding
artifacts is, I think, unlikely. The road was built in a very slipshod
manner by the Gould interests, and while there were some improvements to the property in 1889 (to help convince PRR to snap it up), I would expect to find little more than fill and perhaps a culvert, if lucky.

Yours,

Cristopher Hoess