RailTrailWxRailTrailWx
E-bikingBikingWalkingRunningHikingBirdingFishingKayakingHorseback ridingand more
Heritage Rail Trail County ParkBeeTree Preserve trails
Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Maryland Park Service (Gunpowder Falls State Park)
The Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail follows the old Northern Central Railway for about twenty miles through northern Baltimore County, from Ashland near Cockeysville to the Mason-Dixon Line, where it continues into Pennsylvania as the Heritage Rail Trail County Park. The stone dust surface is wide and rail-grade gentle, rising steadily but almost imperceptibly toward the state line. The southern miles run beside Big Gunpowder Falls under hardwood forest, then the corridor follows Little Falls and Beetree Run north past Monkton, White Hall, Parkton, and Freeland. Restored Monkton Station is the busy midpoint, with restrooms, a bike shop, and a summer information center. Horseback riders and anglers share the path with cyclists, and the river draws tubers and kayakers.
Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail!
Tropical Storm Agnes washed out the Northern Central's bridges and roadbed north of Cockeysville in June 1972, and the bankrupt Penn Central never rebuilt them. The Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad was chartered in 1828 to link Baltimore with the Susquehanna River. Its crews built north up the Gunpowder valley, reached the state line above Freeland in 1837, and opened to York in 1838. Iron furnaces, lime kilns, quarries, and water-powered mills along the Gunpowder and Little Falls gave the railroad its first customers. In 1855 the Baltimore and Susquehanna and three affiliated roads became the Northern Central Railway, which the Pennsylvania Railroad soon controlled. Trains hauled flour, paper, milk, farm goods, and coal between villages such as White Hall, Parkton, and Bentley Springs and the city. Commuters rode the Parkton Local to Baltimore until 1959. Thirteen years later Agnes ended service for good, and the Penn Central won permission to abandon the line south of York. The tracks came up in 1976. Maryland's Department of Natural Resources bought the corridor between Cockeysville and the Pennsylvania line in the early 1980s, and in 1984 the first section of the Northern Central Railroad Trail opened from Ashland to Monkton. Volunteers organized in the 1990s to maintain it and added eight history signs in 2005. In 2007 the state renamed the trail for Torrey C. Brown, the DNR secretary who championed it. The Rail Trail Hall of Fame followed in 2015.
