The Bowie Railroad Museum

The Bowie Railroad site originates with the 1870 founding of Huntington City (renamed Bowie in 1880) and the August 1870 sale of two lots to the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad for a station and engine house. Service began when the line opened from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. on July 2 1872, and the Pope’s Creek Branch opened from Huntington in January 1873, establishing the Bowie station at the junction. After the Pennsylvania Railroad acquired the B&P outright in 1902, it rebuilt the original 1890s interlocking tower destroyed by fire in 1910 and moved a 1913 tower from Severn to Bowie in 1934; a new station building appeared in the early 1930s and passenger service to Pope’s Creek ended on October 29 1949. The PRR merged into Penn Central in 1968, Amtrak assumed intercity service in May 1971, Conrail took over unsubsidized Baltimore‑Washington service on April 1 1976, and Amtrak began the commuter‑oriented Chesapeake in 1978, later operating the AMDOT service from January 1 1983 before cutting the Chesapeake on October 30 1983. MARC replaced AMDOT in 1984, moved service to Bowie State station on February 27 1989, and the Bowie interlocking tower ceased operation in 1986 when the line’s signaling was computerized. The City of Bowie purchased and relocated the three historic buildings in 1992, restored them to Pennsylvania Railroad gray and burgundy livery, reopened them as the Bowie Railroad Museum (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998), and replaced a deteriorating 1922 Norfolk and Western caboose with a former B&O caboose in August 2016.