22-09-02 PHOTOS: Franconia Landover

In the fall of 2022 the Washington Metro was planning a long term outage of its Yellow Line service due to a necessary reconstruction of the long bridge over the Potomac river. To partly compensate for this, travel on the Virginia Railway Express Fredericksburg Line to the Alexandria and Franconia-Springfield stations would be free for several months. Since the Fredericksburg Line service is peak direction only, I had yet to find an opportunity to ride it and therefore I chose to take advantage of both the free fares and some off time before the Labor Day weekend to at least sample a portion of the route. Also included in this set ( mirror ) are photos related to Amtrak's LANDOVER interlocking replacement project.

To make the VRE connection I first traveled to Washington Union Station via the MARC Penn Line where I was able to get this photo of K TOWER and the approach to Union Station.

Due to a later mobile phone issue, a portion of the photos from this trip, specifically stuff at stations and on the DC Metro, were lost. Therefore we will cut to my VRE train's departure from Washington Union Station track #24 as a following VRE set with MP36PH-3C #V58 pulls in to the same spot.

Thanks to VRE's gallery car rolling stock, I was treated to a reverse railfan view out the back window where I was able to get video of the departure through Union Station's A interlocking and the First Street Tunnels that run beneath Capitol Hill.



Approaching the Honorable Richard J L'Enfant Plaza station, my train passed VRE MP36PH-3C #V51 in the L'Enfant pocket track. This was added to address VRE yard capacity issues in Ivy City.

Passing the drawspan on the PRR's Long Bridge over the Potomac river.

Outbound Blue Line train at Braddock Rd station led by 7k car #7672.

Amtrak P42DC #50 with Regional Train #94 at the Alexandria Amtrak station.

The famous AF interlocking was rebuilt in the early ~2000 for expanded VRE service, but lost the old tower, RF&P signals and pneumatic point machines.

Around 2010, the old RF&P segment between AF and Franconia-Springfield was the first to receive a third main track

VRE Gallery car #V726 departs the Franconia-Springfield station. This is one of the few Fredericksburg Line stations to have platforms serving both tracks. The peak direction serves allows VRE to get away with single track operation at most stations.

The Franconia-Springfield VRE station opened as an infill station in 1995 and is integrated with the adjacent WMATA Blue Line terminus, which opened in 1997.

Skipping ahead again due to lost phone photos, here we see WMATA train of 3k cars departs the Alexandria King St station with #3049 in the lead.

Jumping to the WMATA New York Ave station, here 6k car #6086 brings up the rear on a Glenmont bound Red Line train.

The New York Ave station is an ideal place to watch the rail traffic heading in and out of Union Station. First up was departing Acela Express trainset with power cars #2013 and #2012.

With its 4:05pm departure coming up, it was time for Amtrak's westbound Capitol Limited Train 29 to make an appearance, backing into Union station lower level track #23. Passing one VRE train between the K and J signal bridges with MP36PH-3C #V54B while second VRE trainset led by #V64 approached from the Ivy City Storage line to the north.

As you can see at the end of the above video, a late running Amtrak Crescent Train #20, equipped with two ACS-86 electric locomotives, #600 and #633, came to a stop just ahead of the K bridge despite a clear signal indication.

While stopped, Train 20 was passed by another inbound VRE set from the yard with MP36PH-3C locomotive #V66 and cab car #V724.

For whatever reason that day's Train #20 was also equipped with two baggage-dorm cars.

With Amtrak, VRE and MARC traffic, this was prime time for K TOWER.

While an Amtrak employee performed some sort of ground inspection, WMATA 3k stock trains continued to stop at New York Ave.

The ground work complete, the Amtrak engineer re-boarded #633, while the Metroliner cab car equipped Regional set pulled out of Union Station with Metroliner #9647 behind ACS-86 #644. The point of the cab car was to facility a speedy turn at Union to save on equipment. How/wye the Metroliner ended up behind an electric locomotive, I am unsure.

The third VRE train wound up doing the old conga line with the one that preceded it as the leader was delayed getting into Union Station's lower level.

From Union Station I actually took MARC out to the Garrett Park station for a Labour Day event. Most of those photos were lost, but here is MARC cab car #7760 departing the Garrett Park station.

This was soon followed by the same westbound Capitol Limited set and P42DC #121 I saw backing into Union station. Typically T29 heads out of DC on Track #1, but today it was put on Track #2, which somewhat impacted my shot. Another railfan from Virginia had used the holiday weekend to come up and stake out this location.



Finally we move to Amtrak's project to replace the LANDOVER crossovers just south of the New Carrollton station and north of the DC border. This stretch of track has been beset with capacity problems for some time as there is no access to track #1 below New Carrollton and local trains switching to track #1 north of New Carrollton are restricted to 45mph after passing LANDOVER. The new HANSON interlocking will provide 80mph high speed crossovers between tracks 2 and 1 northbound and 3 and 2 southbound with 45mph turnouts available in the opposite direction.

Although certainly at risk for demolition, the old LANDOVER might wind up hanging around as often the cost of the associated asbestos abatement tends to encourage Amtrak to keep the structures standing.

Here we have a pair of of Amtrak Regionals hauled by ACS's 86 #634 and #612 passing LANDOVER tower.

Well that's all for these photos. Next time we'll be back in Virginia for a day trip to Roanoke.