John Harwood Stanford III, a dispatcher who controlled the movement of trains along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, died of surgical complications Oct. 1 at his Guilford home. He was 67.

Born in Baltimore and raised in the home his grandparents acquired in 1915, he was the son of John Harwood Stanford Jr. and Clara Jones Stanford.

He attended the Calvert School and was a 1975 McDonogh School graduate.

“John was infatuated with trains and railroading from a very young age, and upon completing high school signed on with Amtrak,” said a friend, David Hughes. “The railroad quickly realized his talent, and within two years he was promoted to a dispatcher’s chair for the Northeast Corridor.”

He began as a trackside tower operator at Bayview and later served at Pennsylvania Station, Gwynn in Southwest Baltimore and Edgewood in Harford County. As the railroad automated, he worked at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and in Wilmington, Delaware. He controlled trains from Washington to Philadelphia.

He retired from Amtrak in 2016 after 41 years of service and with several commendations.

Mr. Stanford was a passenger waiting for his daily train commute to work in Philadelphia when a large piece of concrete dropped from the ceiling of Penn Station onto the tracks. Mr. Stanford alerted the authorities to halt all local train traffic.

He also physically signaled the incoming train’s engineer of the emergency. He was cited by Amtrak for his quick actions.

Mr. Stanford, as a young Amtrak employee, also had access to an aging electric locomotive classified as a GG-1. He told friends that in the early hours of the morning, when the railroad was quiet, he took the engine out for joyrides from Baltimore to Harford County and back.

Mr. Stanford was a meteorology buff. He was an aficionado of Top 40 music from the late 1950s up to 1990 and amassed a collection of Baltimore-sourced, broadcast-quality disc jockey equipment inspired by his favorite AM radio station, WCAO.

Mr. Stanford was fascinated with Baltimore’s reservoirs and water distribution system. In one room of his home, he displayed restored, vintage cast-offs from the Guilford Reservoir pumping station off Cold Spring Lane.

Mr. Stanford often structured his schedule around Orioles, Colts and Ravens games — and he collected related memorabilia.

He had an affinity for intricate aviary figurines, which he placed in his front entrance hall. He owned Harley-Davidson motorcycles and later transitioned to Jeep automobiles.

He fed squirrels and birds daily at multiple stations and maintained a beautiful flower garden.

“Animals were always important to him, growing up with Lassie rough collies, and later he had several cats,” Mr. Hughes said. “This devotion led him to volunteer at the Maryland SPCA on Falls Road after his retirement.”

He collected model trains in addition to full-scale trackside artifacts that served as yard art at his home. He displayed cast-off working signals from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in his garden.

Mr. Stanford was a member of the Western Maryland Railway Historical Society.

Survivors include his sister, Elizabeth Stanford Butterfield, and his niece, Katharine Corning Butterfield, both of Auckland, New Zealand.

No funeral is planned.