The topic title is a little misleading.

The Catonsville #8 Tolley Trail, linking the west end of Edmonson Avenue in northwest Catonsville to Ellicott City, has been in existence for years. It's a nice rural bit of what had been private right-of-way for the streetcar line.

The proposed additional trail is on part of the former PRR branch known as the Catonsville Short Line, which linked the former PB&W/PRR/Amtrak corridor to Catonsville. Unfortunately, the line's ROW was severed by the construction of I-695 years ago.

http://www.abandonedrails.com/Catonsville_Branch

More on the trail proposal:

http://www.traillink.com/trail/catonsvi ... trail.aspx

Concurrently, a group in central Baltimore is attempting to make the currently-unofficial trail on the former Maryland & Pennsylvania ROW along Stony Run in the vicinity of Wyman Park and Johns Hopkins University into an official trail/path of sorts; unfortunately, much as the organizers want to pay tribute to the Ma & Pa, there remains not one single artifact or vestigial remain, as the city did extensive spoils dumping on the right-of-way in the 1960s and 1970s.

For many years a single-track girder bridge carried the Catonsville Short Line over the Baltimore Beltway (I-695). It was when a beltway-widening project necessitated removing the center support pier that the by-then unused bridge was removed. Too bad these trail enthusiasts weren't around back then! -- Ray

Actually, I can show you to a nice little stack of original M&P rail in Wyman Park behind JHU.

When was the last time you were there, Erik? Because they had a construction crew lay down a major sewer/drainage line in the past two years, including right through the old tunnel under 29th Street....... If you can pinpoint that rail's location, we'd love to hear about it, because we went all over the right-of-way post-construction and found nothing.

South of Wyman Park bridge there is a level playing field area. South of that, a wooded area sloped downhill toward the ROW from above. IN the brush where that wooded area was closest to the ROW was rail, stacked off the ROW and already heavily overgrown in 1988. I'd be surprised if someone bothered to move it out.

I just rang the guys who walk the trail almost daily.

Either the sewer gangs took them out for scrap, or they're possibly buried not only under brush, but under construction waste/dirt as well. But they're now doing an all-points bulletin to look for it.