Potomac Yards in Washington Post

[hutton_switch]

Two B&O RR Historical Society members provided information on the now-defunct Potomac Yards in Alexandria, VA in the regular local column, "Answer Man" in today's Washington Post (December 6, 2009). To see the article, go to this URL: http://tinyurl.com/ygz9sec.

For those of you who may not know, Potomac Yards was owned and operated by the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac RR. Pot Yards was used by the B&O, Pennsy, Southern, and C&O Railroads as a central point to reroute freight shipments on north/south routings.

[BaltOhio]

Interesting and, for a newspaper, surprisingly well-informed -- thanks to the reporter getting to the right people. I guess we just have to live with people calling railroads "train companies", but it's a small price to pay.

Which reminds me: I was once given as a technical reference for a Baltimore Sun reporter doing a background story on a fatal MARC-Amtrak collision near Silver Spring, MD, some years ago. The accident involved an eastbound MARC train (which had passed a red signal) sideswiping the WB Capitol as it was crossing over from one track to another. The reporter's first question was, "How do trains get from one track to another? Do they have steering wheels?".

[chnhrr]

You don’t want to the see the yard now. It has been replaced with a nasty shopping center and more bad development is to come (I live 10+ minutes from the former site). Didn’t the short line Washington and Old Dominion use it as well?

[hutton_switch]

Didn’t the short line Washington and Old Dominion use it as well?

Yes, it did. There is an old aerial photo of Pot Yards you can find in some local rail history books that has a rail viaduct crossing it diagonally at the southern portion of the operation. That is the W&OD.

[BaltOhio]

The W&OD didn't "use" the yard as such, but it picked up and set off cars at the yard through an interchange connection at the viaduct's east end.