Gettysburg Railroad

The Gettysburg Railroad Station of was used as a hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg
Locale	Pennsylvania
Dates of operation	1851 (1851)–1870 (1870)
Successor	Susquehanna, Gettysburg and Potomac Railway
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)

The Gettysburg Railroad was a railway line in Pennsylvania that operated from 1858-1870 over the 17 mile (27 km) main line from the terminus in Gettysburg to the 1849 Hanover Junction. After becoming the Susquehanna, Gettysburg & Potomac Railway line in 1870, the tracks between Gettysburg and Hanover Junction became part of the Hanover Junction, Hanover and Gettysburg Railroad in 1874, the Baltimore and Harrisburg Railway in 1886, and the Western Maryland Railway in 1917.

On March 4, 1851, Robert McCurdy, Josiah Benner, and Henry Myers secured a charter for the Gettysburg Railroad Company. The groundbreaking was on February 22, 1856; the 1st mortgage was issued in 1857, and the railroad opened between Hanover Junction and New Oxford on January 6, 1858 (the first passenger train had entered Adams County on September 14, 1857). After construction commenced from New Oxford on June 24, 1858, a locomotive first entered the Gettysburg borough on November 29. Service from Goulden's Station had begun by September 27, the line was "completed" at Gettysburg on December 1, 1858, with operations over the Gettysburg Railroad Company tracks managed from that date by the Hanover Branch RR until June 12, 1859. The last spike was driven at Gettysburg on December 16, 1858 (12:30 a.m.); and that day at Hanover, company representatives met an official "party of Baltimoreans" with the Blues Band from Calvert railway station. The group arrived at Gettysburg at 3 p.m. where a reception was held at "a large and recently furnished building near the depot". The Gettysburg Railroad Station contracted in the fall opened in May 1859 after the railroad had been the site of a New Oxford riot at the end of December 1858.