Hanover Junction Pennsylvania

The Northern Central Railroad Station

From perhaps the newest train station in our last posting, we go to one of the oldest train stations in this posting, the station built by a predecessor line to the Northern Central Railroad, which itself later became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad System, in a remote valley in south Central PA.

The main reason for a station here was to allow passengers and freight from the Northern Central to connect with the railroad that went Northeast from here to the little Pennsylvania community known as Gettysburg.

And so it was, that on November 1863, this station had one particular passenger visit it on his way into the annuals of history. For it was to here that Abraham Lincoln came from Baltimore. And it was from here that he boarded another train and rode off to the northeast to deliver his famous words we now know of as "The Gettysburg Address."

The station today appears to be used as some type of eating establishment. The tracks you see in the picture are only used occasionally. It has been many years since they were used regularly. Instead, the line through this area has been converted into a bike trail. Parts of the Northern Central in northern Baltimore County have become the roadbed for the Timonium Line of the MTA Light Rail line that runs into Baltimore. But most of the rest of the road has been given over to recreational use.

But who knows, maybe late at night, Vachel Lindsay may be right, and a ghost of Lincoln walks around Hanover Juntion, waiting to catch another train to destiny.