Why does DC have so much abandoned railway electrification?

Or also: a comprehensive history of the railways in and around Washington DC.

Trains Are Awesome!

[pastorjerrykliner]

You should see the situation up in Pennsylvania... The ENTIRE Pennsy network was electrified but with the demise of the Pennsy and the "Penn Central" most of those electrified lines have been "de-electrified" but leaving most of the stanchions in place to rust away.

[lawrencewild]

You actually missed one other player in the Union Station unification. The Southern Railroad which shared traffic rights over the Pennsy's lines into Union Station from just south of Alexandria yards. DC was in fact the northern termination of the Southern Crescent out of New Orleans (and the northern passenger terminus for all Southern Railway runs). A run near and dear to my heart as I was able to ride on one of the last of their runs back in 1978 shortly before their consolidation into the Norfolk & Western and then the elimination of their passenger service and handing it over to Amtrak (and since it was in December of 1978 I do mean just before, the handover was the end of January). At that point I believe the Southern Crescent was one of the last, if not the last, of the great named passenger runs not in Amtrak service. I will never forget how wonderful the ride up from New Orleans was, the quality of the meals and the pride the entire staff expressed in providing first class service right to the end. Nor will I forget how the whole tenor and feel of the service changes when in Union station the train was handed over to Amtrak and the amenities of the Crescent were removed and the train became the Northeast regional I believe. I rode it up to Penn station in Baltimore, where my dad picked me up (it was my first leave during my time in the USAF. Fresh out of tech school I had treated myself to a train ride as a treat. I had heard they were handing it over and I wanted to be on one of those last rides on the Southern.)

[Ulisest]

There was an electric bypass in Wilmington Delaware that bypassed the NEC passing through the city. its now single tracked with the old Catenary towers still visible.

[SuperDave]

This is absolutely a great story and some very serious archives.

[matttjaden]

Thom, good video but I’d also like to add a few things. There were two big reasons Conrail stopped using electric locomotives. By the late 70’s the GG1 were end of life. The other main electric locomotives Conrail used, E33s and E44s, had transformers that used oil that contained PCB. PCB are known to cause long term health issues and were banned by the EPA in the 1970’s. Conrail had debated rebuilding the E44s which was very costly due to having to flush the transformers and dispose of the PCB laced oil. Conrail had also looked to EMD for possible replacement locomotives and EMD build two demonstration models. However by this time Amtrak had raised the rates they were charging Conrail for use of electric power. This in connection with the end of the oil crisis caused Conrail to discontinue the use of electric locomotives.

As for Potomac Yard, there were several reasons why the yard closed down in 1992. In your video you stated the yard closed in 1989, operations were consolidated into a smaller yard by that point.

At Pot Yard, as us long time railfans called it, was a major interchange point between Southern Railway and Conrail. Up until the mid 80’s Conrail trains would use the NEC to get from Baltimore to Pot Yard. Amtrak had started to become more hostile to Conrail using their track at the time. The catalyst that push Amtrak to practically ban Conrail from their tracks was the tragic Chase, MD derailment. This forced Conrail to use the B&O to get from Pot Yard and Baltimore until Norfolk Southern reached a deal to interchange trains in Harrisburg, PA.

Please check out the RF&P Historical Society. We are a dedicated group who are working to preserve the history of the RF&P.

[brycebundens]

Electrify the NE corridor all the way to Richmond!!!! I hope we all can make it happen soon!!!! Excellent video, it’s a documentary that was sorely needed about all of the city’s former railways. There is so much old ROW ready for new Metro lines, light rail, and streetcars!!!

[Rovan]

I was just fiddling around in Google Maps a few weeks ago trying to find out where the Landover subdivision was going after it split from the NEC! Glad to see you tackle this subject in detail, Thom.

[davinp]

In the future, VRE plans to build a new L'Enfant Plaza station with 2 platforms. This will be needed when MARC trains go to Alexandria, VA

[JohnM]

EXCELLENT Video. It is a shame the wires were taken down. Many hours of labor went into installing electrification to a railroad. You did many hours of research !!! Keep up the GREAT work.

[oldfart]

"The Mall is not for electric trains its for food trucks", good one Thom.

[Zy]

Great movie. Well shot, well narrated, and well paced.

Just a few clarifications/corrections:

1) The Pennsylvania started its AC electrification in Philadelphia in 1915, and expanded it through the greater Delaware Valley through the 1920s. It wasn't until the 1930s, however, that the mainline beyond Trenton and Wilmington got wires. New York City was connected in 1933 and the wires reached DC in January, 1935.

2) In addition to other reasons cited below, one of the reasons for Conrail cutting the wires was due to the lack of flexibility. There just wasn't enough electrified mileage to be worth it. If the wires had gone over the Alleghenies, they would probably have stayed, but as it was there was relatively little incentive to keep them up.

3) The reason that the electrified freight lines were entangled with the Northeast Corridor was because the PRR never had the chance to finish its proposed Low Grade Network. Additional lines would have run from Downingtown to Philadelphia via Newtown Square and from Morrisville, PA to Linden, NJ. Obviously, these would not have completely separated things, but in conjunction with extra tracks, and a proposed Belt Line around Baltimore there would have been far less interaction. Another line that I've heard described as being part of the Low Grade Network was the Oxford Road branch.

4) Another reason given for closing Potomac Yard was the concern about large quantities of hazardous cargo in close proximity to the nation's capitol. Of course, the Virginia Avenue Tunnel is still in use today, but at least freight keeps moving and doesn't have a chance to accumulate or become a tempting target for terrorists.

[NikonFuser]

There is similar infrastructure along the "Port Road" from Perryville, MD to Enola, PA...

[lizzy]

23:28 While Conrail did deelectrify their lines around that time, it wasn't until CSX was looking to run double stack container freight that most of the wires and whatnot were actually removed. Conrail and later CSX just ran their freight under the abandoned catenary for decades, never seeing the need to waste labor and interrupt service to remove the disused infrastructure until it was actually in the way. You'll also notice that some of the poles have visible evidence of their cross members having been removed, which also came down at that late date. The catenary infrastructure on the Long Bridge, other than the wires themselves, were removed years later. You can still see the stumps of the poles on the bridge supports if you look from the adjacent Metro yellow line bridge, as well as a few surviving poles with other cables still attached just into Virginia. There also remains some other poles in Arlington.

[lionelmpc]

Well done and well researched video! Many (but not all) of the places that the overhead catenary poles remain on freight only lines are due to them carrying some part of the former Pennsylvania Railroad power transmission and distribution network. The Pennsy used 25-cycle AC which is not directly compatible with the 60-cycle grid, so they built their own transmission network. Amtrak has never upgraded the system to 60-cycle, which I assume is due mainly to the two Amtrak scheduled 25-cycle hydro power generators located at the Safe Harbor Dam on the Susquehanna River. When the line was de-electrified south of Union Station it led to serious power instability in the overhead wires located around the station. Amtrak had to install another power feed to fix the problem.

The beginning of the end of electric freight on Conrail was when the Northeast Corridor was transferred from Penn Central to Amtrak in 1976. While PC freight was on home rails Conrail found itself only a tenant. Amtrak wanted the through freights off the corridor and charged ever higher fees to use it's track. It got so expensive that Conrail decided to re-route as much freight off of the corridor as possible. Without the main "spine" of the corridor (and the Philly-Harrisburg Keystone main line also owned by Amtrak) it left a handful of disconnected electrified secondary lines that no longer made any sense. Conrail de-electrified completely by 1983, with the remaining freight trains that had to run on the corridor being diesel powered ever since.

[CoffeeAndPaul]

Quick note about DC squirrels:

DC has black squirrels in addition to the typical American grey squirrel. The Canadians were sad that squirrels around the Nation's Capital had been hunted or otherwise killed to local extinction so they grabbed some squirrels from parks in Ontario, took them to DC, & released them around the Capitol Mall area & the National Zoo.

Like trains, the Potomac was like a barrier for the black squirrel but somehow they've made the leap across the River & are in Northern Virginia
🐿️🐿️!

[gezag.hanniker]

A couple of things to mention… not only Pot Yard was dismantled but another big yard was as well… that yard is the
N & W yard in Alexandria. Also there is a very good book I would recommend for learning about railway electrification.. it’s called … “When the Steam Railways Electrified “ by William D Middleton .. 2nd edition.

[MrCateagle]

For a fair bit of history on this, see William D. Middleton's "When the Steam Railroads Electrified". It is a fascinating book and I recommend it.

Bad blood between the B&O and the PRR was definitely evident at the 1894 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

[xXBlueSheepXx]

This is one of those things I've always noticed about DC but never thought about deeply. Thanks for making this video.

[TheOneKEA]

This was a fantastic video!

One other thing you may want to explore is the former site of Capitol Substation (Sub 25), the original southern terminus of the PRR’s 138kV transmission grid. Prior to 1995, the two 138kV lines along the Landover Sub tracks (now partially removed, as shown in your video) continued south past the site of the former 25Hz generator at the Benning Road power station and crossed the Anacostia River before transitioning from overhead lines to underground lines at a pair of aerial terminal towers just east of the Virginia Avenue tunnel. The 138kV lines, now insulated and enclosed in cable ducts, traveled through the Virginia Avenue tunnel and then terminated at the Capitol Substation, where the switchgear, transformers, catenary breakers and control equipment were located. Several 12kV circuits emanated outward from the Capitol Substation; some of them powered the catenary between Landover Substation and Potomac Yard; some of them were insulated and traveled back through the 1st Street Tunnels to connect to the switching station next to Union Station (Sub 25A); and some of them went to another switching station in Pot Yard in order to operate the catenary in the yard itself. When the insulated cables reached end-of-life in 1995, CSX decided that they didn’t want the 138kV cables in their tunnel any longer and demanded their removal, resulting in the decommissioning and removal of Capitol Substation, Pot Yard switching station (located on the site of the current 60Hz utility substation near the W&OD trail), and the removal of the feeders to Sub 25A at Union Station. (I don’t know if Pot Yard switching station was still in use past 1989 but it would have definitely been decommissioned when Capitol Substation was decommissioned). The removal of the 12kV feeder circuits that ran from Capitol Substation to Sub 25A significantly weakened the electrical capacity of Union Station and Ivy City Yard, resulting in many problems with the HHP-8 locomotives that contributed to their notorious reputation. In order to fix it, Amtrak commissioned a 2008 study into the problem, and then built two new 138kV circuits in 2010 that follow the Northeast Corridor from the split east of Cheverly and terminate at the far eastern end of Ivy City Yard, at a new substation called Ivy City Substation (also numbered Sub 25). This substation has two transformers (with room for a third) and restores the missing 12kV feeder capacity needed for Union Station and Ivy City Yard’s electric locomotive operations. Your video clearly shows the transposition in the circuits at Cheverly station as they travel along the Corridor towards the other crossing of the Anacostia River.

I have some digitized documents that talk about the construction of Capitol Substation and Ivy City Substation that go into detail about the design and implementation of the electrification in the D.C. area and provide some useful context about the information you provided in your video. I also have three dead-tree books called “Under Pennsy Wires” (by Paul Carleton), “The Pennsylvania Railroad Under Wire” (by William D. Middleton, ISBN 0-89024-617-3) and “TRAINS” (edited by John Westwood, ISBN 0-7064-0939-6) that have even more details about the PRR electrification; the third book also has lots of detail about the electrified freight lines elsewhere in the U.S. that you referenced in your video.

I am looking forward to the next entry in this series!

[dexteralexander]

A fascinating history lecture clearly backed by extensive research. Plus, two Lindsey cameos and a rabbit. You made my Saturday morning, Thom.