clay tile block

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:10:40 -0500 
To: "N&amp;W Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> 
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject:  Coal via Potomac Yard

The North Alexandria PEPCO plant is built on the site
of the old clay pits.  The Clay Tile Block used in
Building of the George Washington Masonic National
Memorial came from this clay pit. 
 
The Plant built in the late 1940's and had a large
addition built in the early 1950's.  The south
propriety line is the B&O Bridge tracks and the WO&D
tracks.  Most will not remember, but the B&O built a
steel draw bridge across the Potomac River around 1906
to get to POT YD from the South so they would not have
to pay the PRR to use Long Bridge to enter POT YD from
the North.  The B&O must have made some kind of a deal
with the PRR in the mid to late
1940's, because the bridge came down around 1950.
before that the B&O would run from 1 train a shift
across the bridge to POT YD. The B&O and the SOU Union
Street Job would interchange on the same tracks.

Note 1: Clay Tile Block was used before the use of
Cinder Blocks. These same Clay Tile Blocks were also
used in the New SOU Round House in Alexandria.  The
outside walls were brick but all inner walls used this
block.

Note 2: The Alexandria and Orange had in the 1850's a
Railroad Barge Wharf at  the east end of the
Alexandria Tunnel  to connect with the B&O, before
1906.  The A&O became the B&O in the 1870's then
became ???? And Great Southern, then the Great
Richmond Terminal Company and then the Southern
Railway.  (???? And Great Southern, I am going to have
to look that one up some day)

HB Lyon


March 26, 2005

Hello, H. B.:

Thanks for the info.  As a side note, the outer walls
of Boyce station are constructed of clay tile block,
to which the stucco suface was applied.  I suspect
that the Charles Town, WV, as well many other brick
N&W stations have clay tile block in exterior wall
construction.

I thought the second bridge across the Potomac at
Alexandria, downstream from PRR's Long Bridge, was
constructed and used only during the WW II years. 
There was an article in a 1940s RAILROAD MAGAZINE
documenting its construction.

It is interesting to me that Jim Foley understands
there were wartime diversions of coal from the
Hagerstown District to Potomac Yard.  Since there were
heavy troop train movements in addition to substantial
passenger and freight service across Long Bridge, I
would have expected that overflow movements would have
been shifted to the bridges at Shepherdstown and
Harpers Ferry.  These are the next bridges upstream
from Washington, DC.  It is hard to conceive that
traffic was so dense between Riverton Junction and
Harrisburg via Hagerstown that the relief was to push
coal shipments through an already-packed Potomac Yard
and the northeast corridor.

Sometime, please let me have your email address, H.B. 
I have some trivial questions focused on Alexandria
that are probably not of interest to most folks on the
N&W list.

GN&GM,



Dr. Frank R. Scheer, Curator
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