23-07-14 PHOTOS: Fredericksburg

In July 2023, Virginia Railway Express offered a week of free fares in an attempt to boost ridership. I had participated in a similar promotion in 2022, but instead of a quick out and back to Franconia-Springfield, I took advantage of Amtrak's lower fares to book a return Regional from the near terminus of the VRE Fredericksburg Line. My DC railfan buddy also decided to join me as Fredericksburg offered a quality food and beverage options in addition to a high pace of activity on the CSX RF&P Sub. You can see the full set of photos here.

Planning on catching the first VRE Fredericksburg Line train southbound, My mid-day MARC berthed at the far end of of the track 7/8 platform at the western edge of Union Station. The walk to the station terminal involved passing MARC cab car #8047, MP36PH3C #19, MARC Mp36PH-3C #30 and MARC single level cab car #7761 and #7760.

Down on the Union Station lower lever I saw that Amtrak Capitol Limited Train #29 had arrived on Track #23 instead of the more customary Track 15/16.

The early southbound Fredericksburg Line train would be powered by VRE MP36PH-3C #V53. Luckily the entire train was open and I could seize the railfan window at the rear as we pulled out of track #24 and into the 1st St Tunnel under Capitol Hill.

VIRGINIA tower has been partly restored, but the ivy covering the rear might be bad for the brick work.

Space in the Ivy City Yard is at such a premium that VRE stores one of its trainsets in a purpose built pocket track in CP-VIRGINIA, seen here with VRE MP36PH-3C #V66.

Departing Franconia-Springfield, which until this point had been the farthest south I had traveled on a VRE train on the Fredericksburg Line.

Most VRE stations, like Lorton here, employ a single platform on track #2 since the peak direction operation precludes the need for opposing VRE trains to pass each other. Savings in station construction is a less discussed factor behind the decision to employ peak direction operation.

At Lorton, Amtrak P40DC's #814 and #821 were gearing up for that day's departure. The older P40 locomotives from 1993 are typically assigned to Auto Train service as they feature freight style braking which makes handling the long train of mostly auto-racks easier.

Encountering a northbound CSX manifest freight crossing the Occoquan Creek bridge. This and several other significant viaducts between Quantico and DC will make installing a full third track challenging.

Speaking of third tracks, construction is progressing well on the second phase of the project with a second third track in service between Possum Point, north of Quantico and Arkendale. The new Quantico station is being set up to handle trains on all three tracks.

The next point of interest was encountering northbound Carolinian Train 80 at the VRE Brooke station.

23-05-19 PHOTOS: Potomac Yard

Every time the DC Metro opens one or more new stations they give out promotional pennants. The last two were fairly major consisting of the Silver Line phases 1 and 2. However infill stations also count and in May of 2023 the Metro opened its last new station for the foreseeable future, Potomac Yard (or Potomac Yards if one happens to be from Baltimore). Located between the Pentagon and downtown Alexandria, VA, the Potomac Yard is located on the site of the former RF&P rail yard of the same name where Pennsylvania Railroad and Conrail freight trains from the NEC would forward their carloads to either the RF&P or Southern Railway for destinations in the south. Ultimately railroad consolidation made this practice unnecessary and Potomac Yard the railroad yard ceased to be a thing in the mid-1990's. The availability of Potomac Yard for development happened to coincide with Northern Virginia's economic boom and in the 2010's plans by Amazon and other tech companies to build out the former Potomac Yard site spurred the need for direct DC Metro rail service. You can check out my photos of the opening day festivities here ( mirror ).

The DC Metro is known to open some of its new stations at odd times with Silver Line Phase 2 opening at 2pm on a Tuesday. However unlike both Silver Line phases, Potomac Yard did not have a mid-day ribbon cutting with an official first train. It would open with the regular start of service on Friday May 19th. Because there was no way (or incentive) for me to get there for the pre-dawn first train, I picked an appropriately early MARC commuter train, led by Kab Kar #7856 at the Halethorpe station, to get me to DC in time to hopefully get a station pennant before supplies ran out.

To get to the new Potomac Yard station I would take the Read Line from Union to Gallery Place and then transfer to a Yellow Line. While waiting for the latter here is a photo of WMATA 6k car #6098 on a Green Line routing at Gallery Place.

For much of the previous year the DC Metro's Long, aka Fenwick Bridge over the Potomac River was closed for repairs, resulting in the temporary elimination of the Yellow Line. The bridge had re-opened in time for the Potomac Yard inauguration and I got this forward looking video document whatever work had been carried out.



Although I wasn't on any sort of official first train, I still grabbed some video of my own personal first arrival at Potomac Yard with this southbound car view video starting at National Airport.



The new station is a pretty basic side platform affair with a new crossover and direct fixation track. Potomac Yard is on the Blue Yellow concurrency so there was a pretty constant stream of trains. The arrival board made use of LCD screens instead of LED dot matrix displays.

While most were 3k and 6k trains, like #3004 below, a few of the 76-car 2k fleet, like #2066, was still running around due to lingering issues with the 7k wheelsets.

The station has a single point of entry and exit at the north end, which results in a long walk for anyone getting on or off at the southern end of the train. Here 6k car #6168 sits under the north end mezzanine.

I was joined on the opening day festivities by Sandbox John, who had attended every Metro opening since day one, and even appeared on a pre-opening promotional film. Unfortunately he neglected to collect the pennants early in his streak and therefore lacks a complete set.

The old C-line right of way had already been planted over for visual remediation. Because the station was on park service property, a lot of work was put into the aesthetics of the station. This contributed heavily to the $300 million cost. The station does contain a "secret" exit to the adjacent Potomac bike trail via two elevators from the mezzanine outside of fare control.

Of course the 7k cars were out and about, but their proportion was still lagging due to the ongoing wheelset repairs.

Because the new station would create additional power draw from acceleration and deceleration, the existing substation was expanded with two new transformers.

23-03-12 PHOTOS: Alexandria

The joint station at Alexandria, VA works as a popular "railfan hack" for those wanting to travel to the DC Metro, but either want take LD trains that don't allow for intra-NEC travel or want more freedom to observe the power change at Union Station. Regardless I had never availed myself of this trick and in fact had never visited the Alexandria station until a friend who was staying in Crystal City suggested meeting up for a railfan activity and meeting up at the Alexandria station presented itself as the best solution. This set of photos ( mirror ) includes all of the action at Alexandria along with some unrelated CSX trains caught at the Savage MARC station.

While waiting on southbound Palmetto Train 89 at BWI, a northbound Regional appeared with ACS-86 #650 to pick up a sizable weekend crowd. I've noticed that Amtrak BWI ridership is fairly competitive with Baltimore Penn.

In a twist of fate, my Tran 89 was being powered by #650's direct sibling, #651.

At Washington Union Station, #651 was replaced with the rather threadbare Amtrak P42DC #125.

The Bradford Pear trees were just starting to bloom as #129 made its station stop at Alexandria.

This was followed up by northbound Regional Train #88 and P42DC #17.

As Train 88 was doing its work, a loaded southbound CSX coal train rounded the bend led by ES44AC #3199 and CM44AC rebuild #7202, with ET44AC #3463 pushing on the rear.

The joint station at Alexandria was served by a confederation of southern railroads, namely The Southern and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac. According to the info board it opened for service in 1905.

 

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.

22-07-08 PHOTOS: Gainesville After Dark - Part 2

One reason I make an annual Amtrak trip to Gainesville, GA via Train 79, 19 and 20 is because schedule is actually pretty convenient for this itinerary since I arrive early Friday morning and depart Sunday night. In past years the departure time of Amtrak's northbound Crescent Train 20 was a little after 9pm, and although it was often running late, the time still allowed to have dinner and get driven to the station with in time for my ride to return home by a reasonable hour. In 2021 Amtrak retimed the northbound Crescent schedule at the behest of NS to "improve reliability" and I'm not exactly sure how that worked, but the result was shifting the departure time by three hours to after midnight (plus any running delays of course). This sticks me with about three hours to kill at the Gainesville station since my ride has a firm limit on their availability. The silver lining is that Gainesville is a also an NS crew base where both local and road power is stored overnight under favorable lighting conditions. In part 2 I will take advantage of these photo opportunities then cover Train 20's return trip including the power change at Washington, DC. Also remember to check out part 1 as well as the full gallery here ( mirror ).

The ex-Southern Railroad Gainesville station serves as an NS crew and MoW base in addition to an Amtrak station. The Amtrak portion has seats, vending machines, a restroom and an automated time-locked door. In 2021 the schedule change was so recent that the door locking system had not been adjusted and the station was locked for the entire time I was there. This time the door was open when I arrived, but I had no way to tell if the door would just suddenly decide to lock itself and therefore I was forced to carry my bag wherever I went.

The downtown Gainesville area has a number of industries including a large feed mill. These are served by a series of yard and industrial tracks typically worked by a pair of road engines that are parked in front of the station when the crews are off duty. Today the local freight engines were NS SD40-2 #6087 and SD60E #6919.

C40-10W #7614 that I had previously encountered on Friday morning was also still on hand in the same location.

While I was waiting a local transfer move rolled in with NS SD40-2 #3307 leading SD60E #6904.

After the local freight train proceeded on its way, I walked down to a lash up of road power left on one of the siding tracks. Likely waiting for a large cut of grain hoppers from the feed mills, the engines included NS AC44C6M #4445, BNSF ET44AC #3908 and CS C44-9W #9958.

Walking back to the station here are #6087 and #6919 posing in front.