Streetcars in Washington, D.C., and Maryland

Lines in Maryland were established as separate legal entities, most with grand plans in mind, but none succeeded financially.

A combination of the rise of the automobile, various economic downturns and bustitution eventually spelled the end of streetcars in southern Maryland.

That same year,[4] the Tennallytown and Rockville Railway received its charter and began building tracks from the G&T's northern terminus to today's D.C. neighborhood of Friendship Heights and the Maryland state line.

[9] Via connections to other streetcar lines, a passenger could ride from the Glen Echo area to the U.S. Treasury Department in downtown Washington in "about 30 minutes".

Railroad tracks, a "frog" (part of a switchback) and the trestle abutments remain visible in Willard Avenue Neighborhood Park in Bethesda, Maryland.

Two years later, Glen Echo began installing amusement rides on the Chautauqua land which led to even more trolley riders.

[16] Much of the right-of-way from Brookmont to Cabin John Parkway is extant, though its rail was removed shortly after abandonment and ownership is divided between WMATA, NPS, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Town of Glen Echo.

It has been considered as a route for a monorail to Dulles Airport, a widened Parkway, a modern trolley, and a bike trail.

The Park Service also made plans to move a quarter-mile section of the streetcar line, north from Little Falls Reservoir, up the hill to make room for the Parkway.

Transit defaulted on its payments to the Riders' Fund, which was created in 1990 to settle two cases that challenged the company's fare increases of the 1960s and 1970s.

Transit's collateral, which included the Cabin John right-of-way, and the Riders’ Fund bought it—minus the trestles—at a public foreclosure sale on June 16, 1993.

After the land swap, NPS rehabilitated the trestle in 2014 and the MacArthur Boulevard Bike Path was rerouted to pass over it.

The City and Suburban Railway was chartered in 1890 to run a streetcar from just east of the White House at New York Avenue and 15th Street NW to what is now Mount Rainier, Maryland, just over the D.C. border.

In 1898, it merged with the Eckington and Soldiers' Home Railway and continued building tracks, reaching Brentwood in 1898 and Hyattsville and Riverdale in 1899.

Stations on the line were: Incorporated in 1894, the Chevy Chase Lake & Kensington Railway began operation on May 30, 1895, along a single-track line beginning at the northern terminus of the old Rock Creek Railway at Chevy Chase Lake along Connecticut Avenue and running north to a station on University Boulevard in Kensington.

Purchased at foreclosure and renamed the Kensington Railway, the line was extended several times, and in 1916 reached its fullest extent to a station a mile and a half north.

When the line south of the Kensington was replaced with buses, the railway no longer had access to power and operations were suspended.

In 1903, the Takoma Park city council took over the lease given by the B & W Transit Company and the resort was closed for illegal gambling.

[40] The only streetcar line ever to actually reach Great Falls, it was a project of developers looking to attract customers to their land west of Wisconsin Avenue.

The developers incorporated the WGFRPC on May 29, 1912,[40] and on December 4, received permission from Maryland's Public Service Commission to hire the Chevy Chase to Great Falls Land Corporation to build the rail line.

Sometime between 1912 and 1914, the WGFRPC built a transformer station in the form of a stone farmhouse to boost power to the trolleys running the route.

The structure was later converted into a residence; it still stands at 8100 Bradley Boulevard, a road created largely by paving over the former trolley right-of-way.

"However, for at least a while, a through service was operated to downtown Washington, with cars from Great Falls running all the way to 8th Street," the National Capital Trolley Museum wrote in 2012.

Remnants of the line include the Gold Mine Spur Trail in Chesapeake and Ohio National Historical Park, which uses about 1,000 feet of the Washington and Great Falls rail bed and cut.