rcthompson04 wrote: ↑Tue Oct 24, 2023 9:48 am
The lack of a station between Wilmington (occasional stops at Newark) and Aberdeen seems to be an obvious hole. Restoring service to Elkton would provide some rail service to northeast Maryland and southern Chester County, PA.
The existing station at Elkton is not in the most optimal location anymore due to how the town had developed since its closure. I suspect that a reopened Elkton station would be built at the western end of BACON so that a large parking lot adjacent to the platforms, with ready access to Maryland Route 272 and local transit, could be provided.
Service at Elkton would also require the long-gestating MTA maintenance yard in Cecil County to be constructed and put into service for MARC’s rolling stock. Because of the lack of a reverse commuting flow out of Baltimore, all of the inbound services have to deadhead from Martins Yard or Baltimore Penn up to Perryville; extending this deadheading to Elkton would consume paths between PERRY and BACON that don’t earn any revenue for MARC and get in the way of the Amtrak services. A shorter deadhead move from the proposed yard in Cecil County would be much less difficult to schedule. Unfortunately there’s no information readily available on the MTA web site about this proposed yard and the last news reports on the yard from local media in Cecil County dates back to January 2015.
(I hope someone with more info on these plans can comment!)