All Aboard for Alexandria

All Aboard for Alexandria. Alexandria Heritage Trail. , The trains must run. So, when a consortium of six railroads created the freight staging facilities at Potomac Yard in 1906, a new bridge was built to elevate the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Railway over both the yard and U. S. Route 1. Passenger and then freight trains crossed the bridge until 1968, when the W&OD ended service to Alexandria. By 1971, the railroad bridge had been dismantled., The steel truss railroad bridge that used to dominate this site was located at the intersection of two historically significant transportation corridors: the Washington and Alexandria Turnpike, which we know today as U. S. Route 1, and the W&OD Railroad., Chartered in 1808, the turnpike was the older of these two transportation corridors. This road connected the seat of government in Washington, D.C., to Alexandria, the Upper Potomac River's major port. In 1926, the turnpike was linked to roads in other states to create U. S. Route 1, becoming one of the nation's first interstate highways., Construction of the rail line that would become the W&OD began in 1855. The goal was to establish a direct rail link between the port of Alexandria and the coal fields of what was then western Virginia. Robert Knox Sneden's watercolor map of 1861 (shown to left) depicted the route of the Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire (AL&H) railroad (later renamed W&OD) as it crossed both the Washington and Alexandria railroad and the Turnpike on its way to Alexandria's coal wharves on the Potomac River., By 1879, the (now-renamed) Washington and Ohio, and Western (WO&W) Railroad had both passenger and freight facilities near Alexandria's waterfront. The WO&W became part of the Southern Railway in 1894. The W&OD Railway leased Southern's Bluemont line in 1911, switching the locomotive power from steam to electricity and finally to diesel. Passenger service was discontinued in 1951, and all service ended in 1968. Mount Jefferson Park follows the former rail bed of the W&OD between U.S. Route 1 and Commonwealth Avenue., [Captions:] , Far Left: A train on the W&OD line crossing the Washington and Alexandria line near Potomac Yard., Left: A conductor on double electrified passenger trolley No. 43 passes out mail at Bluemont Junction. Photograph by E. E. Edwards, July 12, 1937., This ca. 1920s view from the W&OD bridge shows Potomac Yard (center), the tracks of the Washington and Alexandria Railroad (left) and Route 1 (far left).