L. Franklin 'Shorty' Bowen
railway engineer and conductor · 1859–1937
Engineer and conductor of the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway for forty years. He started railroading in 1889 - the year before the line reached the Ocean City bridge - and was retired in 1929, four years before the storm of August 1933 cut the trestle and ended rail service to the resort for good. He died in 1937 aged 78.
In the record (1)
1937 · 1937-05-28
A man who had run trains on the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic for forty years died in 1937, eight years after they retired him and four after the line to Ocean City ended
'L. Franklin "Shorty" Bowen, 78 ... served the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad Company for forty years as an engineer and conductor, starting railroading in 1889 and being retired in 1929.' The dates make the shape of the thread. He began in 1889, the year before the railroad's own bridge carried trains onto the island; he came off the footplate in 1929, at the end of the last decade in which the trains still ran; and four years after that the hurricane of 23 August 1933 cut the trestle and the line to Ocean City was finished. By 1937 the railroad survived at Ocean City only as a place-name in survey descriptions - 'the old railroad bridge site', 'the R R Lot south of Worcester street' - and as a seller of land, its bay-front strip having gone to the Coast Guard.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-11