Public Service Commission of Maryland
government · founded 1910
Also known as PSC
Maryland's utility and common-carrier regulator. In September 1924 the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway petitioned it for permission to discontinue the station agencies at Rockawalkin, Bloomfield, St. Martin's and Reid's Grove on its Love Point–Ocean City route; the Commission held the petition open for protests.
In the record (8)
1911
Black Baltimore attorney W. Ashbie Hawkins complains to the Maryland Public Service Commission against the B.C.&A. - Ocean City's railroad - over Jim Crow accommodation on its bay boats.
In December 1911 W. Ashbie Hawkins, the pioneering Black Baltimore civil-rights lawyer, filed suit against the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway — the company whose rail-and-steamboat line from Baltimore via Claiborne was Ocean City's lifeline — charging discrimination against Black passengers on its Chesapeake Bay steamers Avalon and Joppa: cramped, poorly ventilated segregated cabins, leftover food, and A.M.E. ministers and their wives denied staterooms overnight. The complaints were ultimately dismissed, though the Public Service Commission recommended more equal seating arrangements. FORUM: not a court suit but a complaint to the Public Service Commission of Maryland (org:maryland-public-service-commission), later appealed to Circuit Court No. 2 of Baltimore City in February 1912. ROUTE: the reported decision concerns the CHOPTANK RIVER route, not the steamers Avalon and Joppa. No source read names either vessel. The Avalon/Joppa detail should be removed or attributed to Bogen rather than asserted. DATE OF OUTCOME: the dismissal is March 1912, not 1911. The 1911 event is the complaint being pending. 'the Public Service Commission recommended more equal seating arrangements' is not supported by anything read; it is not in Laird's reported opinion. Drop unless Bogen supports it. ADD: Hawkins was elected Supreme Chancellor of the Knights of Pythias of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres at Asbury Park on 12 September 1911, three months before the complaint - see fact:1911-hawkins-elected-supreme-chancellor.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayW. Ashbie HawkinsWilliam Cabell Bruce
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1911 · 1911-12-07
The Black press follows Hawkins's Public Service Commission complaint against the B.C.&A. through December 1911.
The Advocate of Charleston, West Virginia — a Black weekly — carried an editorial paragraph on 7 December 1911: 'Whether W. Ashbie Hawkins succeeds or not in having better accommodations provided for colored people traveling on the boats plying on the Chesapeake Bay, he will merit the thanks of the race for having made the attempt.' This is the earliest contemporary notice this campaign has found of the proceeding, and it establishes that Hawkins's complaint against the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway was live and known nationally within the Black press before the end of 1911. The Baltimore Afro-American Ledger was simultaneously urging its readers to fund it: 'Lawyer Hawkins is not fighting his own battles, but the battle is for the people, and the people should sustain him.'
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1921
What the B.C.&A. actually did in 1921: it asked the Public Service Commission for permission to CUT its Baltimore-Ocean City fares, to fight the new bay ferries.
On 26 October 1921 "the Maryland, Delaware & Virginia and the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway Companies... filed with the Public Service Commission application to reduce rates... On the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic between Baltimore and Ocean City, including Claiborne and points on the railway division." The Baltimore-Claiborne fare was to fall from $1.59 to $1.35, Love Point from 98 cents to 65, Choptank river points from $2.16 to $1.63, with "commensurate reductions... between other points affected by the petition." The Commission "received the petition with surprise, tinged with delight," felt "so heartily in accord with the application" that it waived the customary notice period. The Cambridge Daily Banner headlined it BAY LINES TO MEET FERRY COMPETITION and quoted the company's Soulsby explaining the move "as effort to get share of business across the bay." That is the documented condition of the railroad in 1921: not default, but a defensive rate cut against automobile ferries. In March the same road had been sued for $30,000 by the widow and children of J. Clarence Parker, a travelling salesman killed at a crossing near Whaleyville in September 1920 when a B.C.&A. special train struck his automobile. The bondholder default belongs to 1922 and the Pennsylvania's withdrawal to 1926.
Train Depot SiteBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-10
1929
The Baltimore & Eastern applies to close eight stations; a shippers' association protests and the Maryland Public Service Commission refuses six outright.
Reported by a Delaware weekly on 1 May 1929: the Traffic and Transportation Bureau of the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association protested, on behalf of the patrons, against the proposed closing of eight stations by the Baltimore and Eastern, and the Public Service Commission of Maryland refused permission to close six of them and made one of the two remaining conditional on the railroad furnishing 'reasonable and convenient service to shippers at that point'. The association counted it a decisive victory.
The reorganised railroad's first instinct was to shrink, and it took a shippers' association and a state commission to stop it. Nothing found says which eight stations, or whether Ocean City was among them.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Baltimore & Eastern Railroad CompanyDel-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1933 · 1933-10-11
The storm took the railroad bridge; on 11 October the railway applied to give up passenger service, and the town did not object
This is the end of the train era, and it is documented step by step. The Pennsylvania Railroad bridge across Sinepuxent Bay 'disappeared beneath giant waves' at five o'clock on the afternoon of 23 August. Two months later, from the Smyrna Times of 25 October: 'Civic organizations of Ocean City, Md., said last week they would not oppose an application filed October 11 with the Maryland Public Service Commission seeking discontinuance of passenger train service on the Baltimore and Eastern Railroad line between Easton and that Maryland resort… Since the storm on August 23, the railroad company has completely abandoned passenger train service to Ocean City, Md. The storm washed away the Ocean City railroad span across Sinepuxent Bay, marooning several freight cars at this resort. To rebuild the bay bridge would cost around $90,000 the railroad company estimates. Construction of a temporary freight station across the harbor on the Worcester County mainland at present takes care of freight service to this resort, coupled with the Pennsylvania Railroad freight truck service.' Mayor McCabe said any attempt to abandon *freight* service would be vigorously opposed. Local opinion held that passenger service had been running at a huge loss for years because of the buses. So the trains did not simply stop: the bridge was not worth $90,000 to a railway whose passengers had already gone to the road, and the town agreed. — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: On 17 July 1934 the council granted a permit for a Tri-State Oil Co. filling station 'on R R lots'. Eleven months after the railway applied to abandon passenger service, its ground in the town was being licensed for petrol — the first documented reuse of railroad land at Ocean City and a concrete terminus for the fact's claim that the trains never came back.
Train Depot SiteBaltimore & Eastern Railroad CompanyWilliam W. McCabe
Source · checked 2026-08-10
1935 · 1935-04-02
Two years after the last train, the railroad was giving Ocean City cinders and the town was fighting for a bus line
At the meeting of 2 April 1935 the secretary was instructed to write the officials of the P. R. Road thanking them for the cinders they had given the city, and “also letter to Public Service Commission asking the Commission to allow the Bus Maryland-Delaware Stages Inc. to run their line to Ocean City.” The railroad that abandoned the line into Ocean City in 1933 is now the town's supplier of road-surfacing cinders — the same cinders the secretary was told in February to unload as soon as relief men were available — and the road itself is being fought for at the Public Service Commission, one carrier at a time. Bills ordered paid the same night: telephone $8.25, Ocean City Ice & Fuel $26.00, R. D. Wood & Co. $61.26, insurance $26.25, Standard Oil $6.40, H. J. Cropper $97.86, and a $5.00 donation to the Boy Scouts.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1946 · 1946-09-09
Ocean City's buses simply stopped before the season was out in 1946, and the council had to write and ask the operator why.
'The busses having quit, Secretary was told to write Mr. Colonell as to why he quit before October 1st.' The answer came on 1 October, when the clerk read a letter from Shore Bus Lines in reply, along with letters from Holcom Bailey asking for a permit or franchise for bus service - a rival already applying for the run. By 22 October the matter had gone up to the Maryland Public Service Commission, whose letter regarding a permit to Colonell was read to the council. It is a quiet end to the fight that consumed the town in 1944 and 1945, when a bus terminal was refused outright in May 1944, granted 2-1 in February 1945 over a public meeting that voted 26 to 14 against it, and pressed in March 1946 to keep its office open and add an extra daily trip.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Shore Bus LinesRed Star Motor Coaches, Inc.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-10-22
With the council a man short since August, a townsman wrote in asking to be appointed - and the minutes record no answer.
'Letter from Talbot Bunting asking to be appointed as a member of City Council was read.' No action is recorded, and the seat John B. Lynch resigned on 27 August was still vacant at the last meeting of the year on 26 November. Bunting was one of the party-boat dock owners the council had summoned in March to explain their charges to boatmen, and in December 1944 he had come before an earlier council with Frank Sacca in the interest of advertising Ocean City by radio. The same 22 October meeting read letters from the Public Service Commission about a bus permit, from Arthur Harris on the Inlet, and from Clarke Gardner on bonds for water extensions, and told Bert Cropper to go ahead towards a unified grade for the streets of the entire City.
John B. LynchG. Bertrand CropperClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-15