page_title: Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway
section_title: Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad Company (1848–1890)
hierarchical_section_title: Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway / Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad Company (1848–1890)
caption_attribution_description: English: Published in an earlier 1883 map on the Washington and Atlantic railroad. cropped out of larger map and reformatted and adjusted for contrast and brightness .. source ..library of congress ... https://lccn.loc.gov/98688847
context_page_description: The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic railroad, nicknamed Black Cinders & Ashes, ran from Baltimore, Maryland to Ocean City, Maryland consisting of 87 miles of center-line track and 15.6 miles of sidings.
  Chartered in 1886, the railroad started construction in 1889 and cost $2.356 million.
context_section_description: The railroad was incorporated on February 15, 1848  and reauthorized in 1864 was to connect Salisbury and Berlin, Maryland; 23 miles apart. At the time the railroad was chartered, there were no other railroads to connect with but instead the investors intended a connection with the steamboats on the Wicomico river in Salisbury, Maryland. When the road started construction in 1867, Dr. H. R. Pitts was president of the company  and completed in May, 1868. One of the original investors was Col. Lemuel Showell (d. 1902), of Berlin, who later became president.
  The railroad started in Salisbury on the Wicomico river and then headed east crossing over the Eastern Shore railroad and then on to Walston's switch, Parsonsburg, Pittsville, Hancock, Whaleyville, St. Martins and finally Berlin. The original 20 mile line was extended in 1871, south 14 miles from Berlin to Snow Hill, Maryland on the Pocomoke river and opened in 1872. This was done under the 1853 charter, revised in 1867, of the Worcester railroad.
  During this same period, a Delaware railroad, the Junction and Breakwater railroad (Incorporated in 1856) with a vision of connecting the three states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia was expanding southward. In 1874, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore (PWB) railroad obtained a majority stockholder position and that same year completed the expansion south to the Maryland state-line. In 1874, the Junction and Breakwater railroad obtained a charter from the State of Maryland to consolidate a number of railroad companies in the State including the Worcester railroad.  
  
  This meant purchasing the assets of the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's extension to Snow Hill built under the Worcester railroad which it did in 1874. The newly consolidated railroad, inclusive of the W&P's Snow hill extension would operate in the State of Maryland as the Worcester railroad and would be completed to Franklin city, Virginia in 1876.
  
  The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad then used the funds from the 1874 sale of the Snow Hill extension to build another six mile extension in the same year, 1874, towards Hammock Point, just opposite of Ocean City. Passengers were then ferried over to the beaches. Two years later in 1876, the Wicomico & Pocomoke, operating as the Ocean City Bridge Company, built a toll bridge across Sinepuxent Bay, from Hommock Point to Ocean City, in Worcester county. This remained the only bridge into the city until a new State built auto bridge was completed in 1919. 
  
  The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad inclusive of its interests in the bridge into Ocean City, operated by its subsidiary, Ocean City Bridge Company, was sold to the newly organized Baltimore & Eastern Shore railroad in 1888.
caption: Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad
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