RISING SUN, January 26, 1983 — People who thought trains had disappeared from the Octoraro Branch Railroad years ago were surprised when 30 freight cars rattled on down the line from Chester County one Wednesday in January 1983. After slipping into Cecil County and clanging past the old Sylmar Freight House, the cars rolled past farms fields and woods, while making a run for Rising Sun.
People stopped to watch as the first train in over a decade scurried through crossings and past former stations on the branch line. One surprised man said it was doing about 30 miles an hour when it passed his house, according to the Cecil Whig.
This unscheduled run kicked off when the cars became decoupled from a locomotive working over the line in Chester County. After that, the cars rolled backward for about a mile before coming to rest at a bridge on Stevens Road outside of Rising Sun. “There were about 15 cars on each side of an old railroad bridge when the impromptu express stopped,” Frank D. Ragan, President of the County Commissioners told the newspaper. Although the “train had no predetermined destination Ragan had no doubt that it would have arrived on schedule if it had.
”Freight service along the line had almost disappeared from the line by the late 1960s. The Pennsylvania Railroad abandoned the Octoraro Branch of south Colora in 1961 but had hopes of keeping the line open to that Cecil County village. But after Hurricane Agnes washed out sections of the track in June 1972, the railroad abandoned all service south of the Pennsylvania State Line. Thus, this was probably the last train to Rising Sun, albeit unplanned and scheduled. The bridge at Stevens Road was removed by the county in 1987.
For more photo album about the Octoraro Railroad see this album on Facebook.