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Mountain
Thunder In The Night
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A trip to Allegany County will show you how Americans moved
about in the country’s first century. Here you can stand
at mile zero of the National Road, the first congressionally
funded highway; tour a replica canal boat at the terminal of
the former C&O Canal; ride a steam train through nearly
virgin countryside; and view horse-drawn carriages, delivery
wagons and open sleighs.
The trip back in time begins upon stepping out of your car in
Cumberland, Maryland, and onto a platform of the Western Maryland
Scenic Railroad Station. There awaits the mammoth black Mountain
Thunder steam engine coupled to early 20th-century rolling stock.
Excursions are offered daily as well as periodic specials, such
as a murder mystery dinner train and comedy dinner train. In
October, Cumberland celebrates its annual Rail Fest.
The steam whistle blows, and billowing black clouds of smoke
and cinder shoot skyward as the train rolls out of the station
heading west on its 16-mile twisting voyage through forest and
farmland.
Along the way, the train disappears into a 914-foot-long tunnel,
arcs along a horseshoe bend and passes tiny towns that time
seems to have left behind. Then it pulls into the former Cumberland
and Pennsylvania station in the town of Frostburg.
The engine uncouples and chugs onto an electric turntable to
be slowly rotated until it faces east and passes the passenger
coaches and couples at the opposite end for the journey back.
While in Frostburg, passengers have an hour and a half —
depending on how quickly they can get off the train — to
have lunch in town. A cluster of shops and a café surround
the train station, along with a must-see treat, the Thrasher
Carriage Museum, which offers free admission with a train ticket.
Amassed by a prominent Allegany County resident during the past
century, the museum is filled on two floors with painstakingly
restored carriages, phaetons (touring cars), sleighs and wagons.
Guides in early-American garb recall tales of places long ago
traveled in these horse-drawn vehicles.
It is fitting that such a collection resides in western Maryland,
because the construction of the National Road began here in
1811. Authorized by Congress in 1803, the first leg of the crushed
stone road, also known as National Pike or the Cumberland Road,
connected Cumber-land to Wheeling, West Virginia, by 1818. It
connected the Potomac River and the Ohio River (in early America,
water was the chief mode of transporting large amounts of goods).
Originally intended to reach St. Louis, the road ended short
of its goal in Illinois when railroads and canals took precedence
in the mid-to late 19th century. However, it did help to build
Cumberland into a thriving town where carriage and stagecoach
manufacturing prospered. |
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