Cumberland, MD 5/26/2012 - Under heavy summer rainshowers, both faux and authentic Western Maryland locomotives are on WM rails at the Cumberland station. The Western Maryland Scenic Railroad's WM GP-30 501--a former Conrail locomotive and a type the WM never owned--has just dropped off two very real WM diesels, SD-35 7436 and SD-40 7471. The pair of EMD SD's are wearing museum quality paint schemes of the exact livery they wore when delivered to serve on the Western Maryland Railway in the early 1960s. More than 30 years after they would have last been past this station while operating on the WM, they have returned home thanks to the preservation work of the Georges Creek Railway in Westernport, MD, which purchased them for revenue freight service to begin sometime later this year on 10 miles of former WM trackage in the nearby Georges Creek valley. As we restored the WM 7436 and WM 7471 to their original paint scheme, we worked from original WM stencils and blueprints recovered from the Hagerstown shops in the 1980s--all placed precisely as they were on the WM locomotives in the 1960s. I was privileged to serve as the GCK's lead graphic designer for the project, working with Cumberland's General Graphics company to produce stencils that were applied by Metro East Industries in East St. Louis, IL.
