Hiking the RF&P From Acca Yard to the North Anna River

by Charles McGuigan 04.1999

The RF & P Line is almost arrow straight from Acca Yard to the North Anna River, forming the spine of metro Richmond’s North Side through the city and into Henrico and Hanover counties. It was one of the earliest and most important train lines in AMerica, literally linking the North and the South, and during the Civil War each side tried its damnedest to control the track. The whistle stops and depots that dot it tell its unique history, and the only way to see it properly is to walk it off.

There are three cars in front of me, and at least twenty behind me and that number’s growing every second. A continuous line of TROPICANA box cars, each the color of a Florida orange, is moving slowly along the tracks that cross Hungary Road. The gate is down and since I’ve been here with my car in neutral, 53 refrigerated box cars filled with orange juice have already passed, moving steadily north with their cargo of liquid sunshine. They call it the Orange Juice Train and it contains enough antioxidants and vitamin C to heal a good portion of the Eastern Seaboard for a couple of weeks. It runs about three times a week from Bradenton, Florida, where the Tropicana processing plant is located, to Kearney, New Jersey for distribution. It is one of the many free shows the RF&O offers to any residents of the area. Thankfully there are still railroad crossings.

The man in the Jeep Wagoneer behind me doesn’t think so. He slams his pals on the steering wheel, his lips moving in a stream of almost audible curses. He flips the bird at the train. He doesn’t seem to be able to calm down and enjoy the steady rhythm of the train dropping down the track. As the locomotive of this train approaches the far off crossing at Glen Allen you can hear the whistle blow, a plaintive note with purpose. The man in the car behind me suddenly stops abusing his steering wheel and his face loosens and his hands gently grip the steering wheel. He’s looking to the south where the end of the train is in plain view. In a moment the gate lifts and the log jam of cars is free, flowing steadily west. 

They are ever present, these trains that run the old F&P. In neighborhoods like Bellevue and Ginter Park, Rosedale and Sherwood Park, at night and early in the morning when the street sounds are silenced, you can hear them colliding in thunderclaps as they couple in nearby Acca Yard. And all along the line in neighborhoods like Edenbrook, Tall Oaks, Deer Springs and, of course, the glorious town of Ashland, you can hear the whistles blow night and day as the trains move ever north and south. More often than not you just catch a short burst of a dwindling whistle like something seen in the corner of the eye–a glimpse, a flash, a reminder. But you know the trains are always there, moving their freight and their passengers, metal beasts of dinosaur proportion and power that keep to their narrow paths, lumbering along, making their presence known long before they arrive.

Linking the North and South

The RF&P line is a perfect loop, a 113-mile necklace of steel that hangs from the nape of Potomac Yard in Alexandria and drops south to the sternum of Acca Yard in Richmond. Whistle stops and depots and small towns adorn the necklace like gemstones, some more expertly cut and rarer than others, with Ashland as the undisputed crowning jewel. 

When the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad Company was born in 1834, trains were still in their infancy. Though one of the shortest rail lines in the country, the RF&P was extremely important, for it formed a vital link between the north and south, conducting commerce and passengers up and down the Eastern Seaboard. 

William E. Griffin, CSX director of employee relations in Jacksonville, Florida, knows the RF&P line intimately. He’s written two books on the historic railroad and talks about the train line and its history as if he’s recalling the life and times of a family member. 

“When the RF&P was finally acquired by CSX in 1991,” says Griffin, “It was the oldest railroad still operating under its original charter in the country. It’s filled with history and all along it there were untold numbers of depots and little waiting sheds. A year after it received its charter the road from Richmond to the North Anna River was put under contract for construction. That was the first section.”

The Industrial Underbelly

It’s approximately 25 miles along the rail from Richmond to the North Anna, and it all starts in Acca Yard near the western terminus of Laburnum Avenue. The morning is crisp and clear and the sound of cars coupling in the yard is magnified. Acca Yard appears to be a mass confusion of rails, like spaghetti tipped out of a colander and onto the flatland of a sink. On the twist and maze of rails in the yard there are hundreds of cars–boxcars, tank cars, wood rack cars, open hoppers, flat cars and gondolas. Each car bears its family crest–CSX, Norfolk Southern, Santa Fe, Burlington Northern and so on. And each car wears a numerical legend stencilled on its side. These numbers tell the weight of the car without loading, the loaded weight, when it was built, and in some cases the repair dates. 

Walking the tracks north, the underbelly of the industry that flanks Staples Mill Road reveals itself. It seems that many business owners don’t care what their backyards look like. Trash, old refrigerators, rusting iron scaffolding, piles of concrete–general disorder.

Under every overpass–Dumbarton, Hilliard, Parham–urban art covers the massive slabs of concrete, as lively and creative an interpretation of the world as cave art or mural. A lot of genitalia, a lot of love messages, a lot of anger and threats–coming of age rituals of the contemporary American male, or female. It’s exuberant art, the colors rich and the shapes stylized. 

Coming through the overpass at Parham, on the east side of the rails, is the old Virginia Wood Preserving site, which is where, for the longest while, railroad ties were treated with creosote, ties that were later used on the RF&P. It’s now more like a park than an old industrial area as this EPA Superfund Site nears completion. The wetlands that used to flank the site are now gone. 

Laurel, a historic district, is dominated by a three story brick building with slate roof. Now home to a number of offices, the building once housed the Virginia Industrial School, an early 20th century reformatory and the precursor of Beaumont. Just north of the old school, on the site of the Laurel Recreation Center, there had been dairy barns, grain fields, a garden, a tailor’s shop, and a blacksmith’s shop, where the inmates, boys between seven and 18 years old, worked daily after attending three hours of classes. On the other side of Hungary Road are several buildings still standing that were also affiliated with the industrial school–the warden’s house, the physician’s home, and the infirmary. All are now residences. 

Before the Civil War, Laurel was called Hungary Station. In the early years of the RF&P, much of the land that now makes up Laurel was purchased for its timber to fuel the steam engines. The railroad also built a water station here. Just several years after RF&P received its charter it built a spur line from Hungary Station out to the Springfield and Deep Run coalpits. 

Above Laurel, townhouses and detached homes flank the west side of the tracks. To the east there is a curtain of trees and a thicket of undergrowth, but at this time of year, denuded of their greenery, the trees don’t hide the housing developments and apartments that line this side of the tracks.

Glen Allen: John Coussons’ Dream

The next crossing is Glen Allen where you can see the supermarket and the flag flying in front of the Post Office. There are a number of older homes built along Mountain Road, a Masonic Lodge, but not much else at this railroad junction. At one time, however, it was a popular spot for tourists from Richmond and there were plans to make it one of the main train stops on the East Coast.

There’s an earthen mound, perhaps ten feet tall, at the northwest juncture of the tracks and Mountain Road. Under that clay and hardpan are remnants of the old Forest Lodge which was razed in 1989. It is a tragedy of enormous proportion that it was finally torn down. All that remains of it is a cupola that sits in a yard at the corner of Staples Mill and Mountain roads. 

Built in the late 1800s as the focal point of a resort, Forest Lodge contained 125 rooms. It was surrounded by at least five ponds, various outbuildings, thickly forested areas that were home to herds of deer. At its peak, just ten years before the dawning of the new century, Dakota and Sioux tribesmen and Buffalo Bill Cody often visited the lodge.

It was an interesting building architecturally and made of hand-hewn heart pine. Throughout, large murals and trompe l'oeil covered the walls.

Forest Lodge was the dream, some might argue a figment of the imagination, of Captain John Cussons. He was a quirky man with a hunger for new experience and a rampant wanderlust. In the 1840s, frankly bored with the civilization of the East Coast, Cussons moved out west and lived among the Sioux and the Dakotas. He returned only at the outbreak of the Civil War and was made a captain and acted as a scout for the Confederacy.

After the war he began a printing press and started conceiving a plan for Glen Allen. He reasoned that since Glen Allen lay midway between New York and the Deep South, had a temperate climate and was positioned on a major rail thoroughfare, it would be an ideal spot for what he called an “idyllic metropolis.” He designed Forest Lodge himself and completed its construction in 1880. It thrived for a little over ten years. But in time people lost interest in the spot. 

Cussons grew more eccentric with each passing year, each year which further proved Forest Lodge more nightmare than dream. In the early 1920s, Cussons owned about 2,000 acres in the area and had become extremely suspicious of his neighbors in Glen Allen. He claimed they threatened him and warned that any human being or animal caught trespassing on his property would be shot on sight, though it appears no one was ever harmed. After his death, Forest Lodge changed hands. Part of it was torn down, but the main section remained intact and eventually became apartments. With minimal upkeep, the buildings gradually became a derelict hulk until its demise ten years ago.

I poke through the mound of clay and uncover several shards of pottery and a small rectangular bottle the color of pale amethyst. Looking north up the track from this vantage point, I can see the subdivision of Deer Springs on the east side, and an industrial area on the west side. There are giant steel pipes you could run a small train through in the yard of the industrial area. And on that side of the tracks there is a 75-foot brick smokestack emblazoned with the single word DARLING.

Local legend has it that a brothel operated just north of the smokestack and that DARLING was painted on the tower to make the spot. Not so, says Deer Springs resident Bev. L. Hale who grew up in the Glen Allen area. “That tower was part of a planing mill and the name of the company was Darling,” she says. “But my mother did tell me that when she was a child boys from the city would take their girlfriends up here and show them the word Darling on the smokestack.”

A northbound Amtrak–a streak of silver, blue, and red–flashes by, its horn blaring, and in a second it’s gone down the track, two red lights on the rear car diminishing to a vanishing point.

Why Taylor’s Crossing Changed Its Name

Hunton, a short walk from Glen Allen, is dominated by a playing field, an antique store, and the Hunton Store, which is set off the tracks at the intersection of Greenwood Road and Old Washington Highway. Hunton used to be called Taylor’s Crossing, but the name was confusing because just up the track on the other side of Ashland there was a whistle stop called Taylorsville. Frequently, the mail was incorrectly delivered; Taylor’s Crossing received Taylorsville pouch and vice versa. And so was born Hunton which was named for one of its prominent citizens, Eppa Hunton, Jr., a president of the RF&P and founder of the law firm of Hunton and Williams. 

Hunton Store, probably built in the 1920’s, is a two story structure with a Spanish flair. Since its construction it has always served the community as a filling station and country store. Upstairs was an apartment where the owners lived.

Today, the store is owned by Diane Samuel, a striking blond with a keen business sense. She does a brisk business. Even at 11:30 on a Tuesday morning there is a steady line of customers trickling in. She sells an assortment of foods and soft drinks, candy and beer and wine and other sundries.

“It’s a community store,” she tells me. “And even though I’m not a local, the community has accepted me. I purchased the business seven years ago. There’s something about a country store that’s always appealed to me.”

As a child, growing up in an old farmhouse just north of Ashland, Samuel would often trek down to Mallory’s General Store near Ellett’s Crossing. “They had drink boxes there and penny candy,” she remembers. Her eyes widen in this recollection. “I always wanted to go behind the counter in that store. But you didn’t do that. That was forbidden territory.” She rings up a sale, hands a young woman her change, then, turning to me, says, “When kids come in to this store I take them right behind the counter so they can see what goes on here. It’s not forbidden territory at Hunton Store.”

The Wilds Near the Chickahominy

North of Hunton the houses become scarcer. It is fairly a wilderness on both sides of the tracks, mysterious and exotic. There are more birds in these woods, you can hear them ratcheting and cawing and cooing, some of the sounds unfamiliar. A red-tailed hawk flies parallel with the tracks and then ascends into a treetop, where I can see him taloned to his perch.

There is a noise that sounds for all the world like the hum of traffic, but there are no cars and there are no roads nearby. It is a noise out of place and it throws me until I realize it is only wind straining itself through the high branches of the trees. Then the spring peepers come up, constant and steady in their chorus, reassuring. It seems that every drainage ditch, every mud puddle, is teeming with these tiny frogs that come out of hibernation the moment the temperature reaches an even sixty degrees. If amphibians are indeed the barometer of a healthy environment, then this section of Henrico County seems to be in the pink of ecological health. 

Walking just on the outside of the rail, with the firm but light give of the ballast under foot, straddling the gaps between the ties that are always just wider or slightly narrower than a single stride, but in time, understanding the rhythm, my pace picks up and I move along beside the rail like a locomotive that’s finally gained its momentum.

Along the rail you find isolated pockets of natural beauty, things unmolested by development, protected by the railroad’s right-of-way. I encounter a bamboo forest that runs parallel to the tracks. It keeps going and going and when I reach the end I backtrack and walk it off slowly, measuring it with my feet. It’s about 350 feet long. Some of these stalks of bamboo are 40 feet high, three inches in diameter.

I reach the bridge that spans the Chickahominy, a place where the Union officer George Armstrong Custer supposedly crossed. The bottom land here is covered with river birches shedding their bark like snakes molting skin, and young ironwoods, bark as smooth and grey as steel and wood just as hard. I climb the bluff and at the summit see hundreds of laurels, some 15 feet tall. In a clearing on the other side of the laurels, there’s a giant white oak, topping out at over 100 feet with a crown that equals its height. All around it grow lesser trees and saplings that seem to have come in adoration of the white oak.

As I climb back up the crushed granite grade, thinking seriously about crossing the bridge on foot, I can hear a train in the distance that has just cleared Elmont and is steaming south. It is lead by a CSX engine and is moving at a good speed, its single light on, like an eye staring me down. I climb down the grade and hunker low, just in time as the three diesel locomotives pass by. The air trembles with the power of these engines. It is a long train, 114 cars. The engines that pull this load have 4,000 horsepowers each. I was told by a CSX spokeswoman that a 90 car coal train weighs between 12,000 and 14,000 tons–that’s 28 million pounds. When the train finally passes, I decide to ford the Chickahominy about a half-mile downstream where the water runs shallow.

An Imaginary Mountain in Hanover

On the Hanover side, the woods are thick and there is little evidence of a human population until you come to Elmont. At the junction here on the south side of the tracks there is a vacant building with iron bars in the window–the old Cobb’s General Store and Elmont Post Office. Facing it is Morris Super Market, run by Jim Mullins. I talk with him for a time. He tells me about the new subdivision going in just to the east off Cedar Lane. About 180 homes, he tells me, and there are more to come.

“I’ll tell you this though,” says Mullins, “I hear a lot of people saying they don’t want it built, but you’ve got to move over for progress.”

He tells me that Elmont started as a rural stop with a post office, though a train hasn’t stopped here for many years. “And there’s this story,” he says. “They say the reason they named it Elmont was to get people to stop and get off the train. Elmont means mountain, and people would get off the train and look around for the mountain, but there was no mountain. Never has been. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what they say.”

After Elmont, it’s woods again. The rails cross Stony Run and then an old farmhouse appears set way back off the tracks and just above that a great Victorian home with a turret and plenty of gingerbread work. On the other side of the tracks is a small enclave of other Victorian homes, all neatly maintained. This was the whistle stop called Gwathmey, it is the gateway to Ashland.

The World’s Biggest Little Town

I get off the tracks and move over to the sidewalk that runs along Center Street. It may well be one of the most beautiful streets in Virginia, lined by extraordinary Vicorian homes, most of which have been painstakingly renovated. It is a showcase of homes, in some ways more captivating than Monument Avenue. And at the heart of it is the RF&P. Which is as it should be, because Ashland, after all, was created by the railroad. 

Just three years after it was chartered, RF&P purchased 457 acres, virtually all of the land now within Ashland’s corporate limits. But the railroad wasn’t speculating in real estate. What it wanted was the old growth stand of white oak and slash pine to fuel its locomotives. Remember, back in 1837 the railroad used steam locomotives that derived power from burning wood. 

A track section master by the name of Adams built his shanty on the property and what is now Ashland then became known as Adams Shanty.

Before the Civil War, a number of mineral springs were discovered in the area and it soon became somewhat of a health spa. In those years, a bowling alley, two hotels, and a shooting gallery were built. Later came a race track and gambling parlors. That’s when the name was finally changed to Ashland, after Henry Clay’s old Kentucky home.

In 1854, just two years after its name change, Ashland was developed by the railroad as a residential community. Within three years more than half the property had been sold at about eight dollars an acre. It was an era of prosperity.

And then the Civil War came and disrupted things. Because the fledgling town was built on the RF&P, a vital line for the sSouth, the Union time and again assaulted the village. In 1862, Brigadier General WH Emory raided Ashland, burning a bridge and tearing up tracks and telegraph lines. A year later, General George Stoneman burnt the depot in Ashland, destroyed a locomotive, tore up the tracks and cut the lines of communication again. The following year, cavalry under General PHilip Sheridan destroyed six miles of track around Ashland along with a locomotive and a number of box cars.

A year after the surrender at Appomattox, RF&P began rebuilding the town of Ashland by first erecting a brand new depot. Two years later the railroad donated about 20 acres to Randolph-Macon College, then located in Mecklenburg County. Now a college town, it grew steadily. The train depot that stands today on Railroad Avenue was built in the early twenties and is considered one of the most architecturally perfect small passenger train stations in the Commonwealth, if not the nation.

After passing by The Caboose and The Iron Horse Restaurant, I cross England Street and, standing in front of Homemades by Suzanne, gaze over at the passenger station. It’s a solid brick building with stout columns supporting the overhand and a slate roof. It is handsome, not in the least ostentatious, elegant in its simplicity, reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts movement. Passenger service from the Ashland depot had been discontinued after 1967, but was continued again in 1985. You can take the trip from the Staples Mills Station to Ashland for seven dollars, $3.50 for kids. It’s a nice jaunt, though short. It only takes 15 minutes.

I spoke with Ashland Town Councilman Franklin Jackson who probably knows as much about the old depot as anyone alive today. His father Andrew Jackson and his grandfather Willie Buckner worked at the depot as station hands. “I used to carry dinner and breakfast to there,” Jackson remembers. “They were there from the beginning and I don’t think anybody else ever worked there.” HIs father was there when the first train pulled out of the station in 1923.

“Back then,” says Jackson, “the freight station was just across the tracks on the east side. My father would get the mail off. And back then they were all local steam engines.” He pauses for a moment and then adds, “My first cousin Leroy Carrington also worked there for years. My family was part of the railroad in Ashland. During this whole time the RF&P has been one of the greatest assets to the county. A lot of people have seen Ashland because of the train. People would see it, fall in love with it, and make their home here. And people in Ashland are like brothers and sisters. It is the biggest little town in the world, and not as far as its physical size, but as far as the size of its heart.”

Shirts Blanton: Old Faithful of the Eastern Railroads

Randolph-Macon College dominates the east side of the track just north of the depot. On the other side are houses. And on the porch of one of those homes there used to be a man who greeted nearly every train that entered Ashland, from the north or the south.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties I frequently rode the train up to Northern Virginia to the home of my parents. And every time I did, I saw a man on a porch in Ashland, waving from a wheelchair. It seems to me that red-white-blue bunting festooned the porch at different times of the year. He was always an enigma to me.

His name was Lewis F. Blanton, or “Shirts,” and for more than 25 years he greeted every train that passed his house. He was confined to a wheelchair from the time he was a young man. Back then he was working in a real estate office in Richmond. He came into the office one night to finish some work and came upon a burglar who was trying to break into the office safe. There was a struggle and the thief shot Blanton. His spinal column was severed, leaving him paralyzed below the waist.

An RF&P conductor by the name of J.A. Zaun would toss Blanton copies of out-of-town newspapers as the train pulled past Ashland. Blanton began keeping a vigil on his front porch, waving at the trains by day, and flagging them with a flashlight at night. Railroaders called him Old Faithful of the Eastern Railroad. In December of 1972 Parade magazine featured him in a lead article. 

He couldn’t catch every train, because some of them passed before he could maneuver the wheelchair out the front door. So RF&P installed a warning buzzer in Blanton’s home, a buzzer connected to the railroad’s circuit of the protection system at either end of town, giving Shirts a 45 second warning that a train was approaching his house. He kept that vigil from nine in the morning until after midnight, seven days a week. And his vigilance probably saved a train from disaster.

Jay Pace, publisher of the Herald Progress, remembers a time when Shirts notified RF&P about a potential fire. “He spotted a car that was on fire,” says Pace. “He saw sparks flying up from beneath one of the cars. They stopped the train that was on the way to Florida.” Shirts Blanton died in 1982. He was 65 years old.

Doswell, nee Hanover Junction

Outside the town of Ashland, I pass the sewage treatment plant. And this day it does smell. Badly. So I move upwind until the air is clear. Further north there is nothing but woods on either side of the tracks. At one point, getting off the tracks, I wander into the woods and find the remnants of the old RF&P train grade. There are deep ravines on either side of it, a creek flows at the bottom of one of them. In what appears to be the foundation of an old building, perhaps a train tower, I find a railroad lantern, completely intact. Stamped into the metal are the letters RF&P.

Just north of Ellett’s Crossing the train grade begins to rise at a fairly steep pitch. On the tracks is the almost thoroughly decomposed body of a deer, its skull resting near its front hooves. Through the lace of trees and branches I can make out what appears to be trenches, earthen fortifications. I descend the grade and climb to the top of one of the earthworks. There are about twenty of them, intersecting different angles. They were probably Confederate defenses for the South Anna River train bridge. To the east of the fortifications is a continuous mound that runs parallel to the existing tracks. It is the old train grade and I follow its course north. I come to the end abruptly, catch myself before taking what would have been a fatal step. From this point you can see down to the South Anna River bed, some 70 feet below. Spanning the river and its 400 yard wide floodplain are four stone piers, monolithic in their appearance, that rise a good 60 feet in the air. They are the remnants of the single span RF&P bridge that was used until 1902 when the dual tracks were laid. It is high ground and a good spot to understand just how difficult it was for Union forces to assault Richmond from the north.

A little more than three miles north is the town of Doswell, where the tracks of the old RF&P cross the tracks of the C&O in a sort of compass rose of steel. East, West, North, and South all converge at this point. So it’s no wonder that during the Civil War this railroad depot was sought by the Union and defended by the Confederacy.

At the time it was called Hanover Junction and the South dug in deep with some elaborate fortifications for its defense. Union cavalry made repeated raids on the depot throughout the war and fought Lee’s army there in a major campaign in 1864 as Grant advanced on Richmond.

Suzanne Fleet, owner of Squash A Penny, which dominates the villagescape of Doswell, says the entire area is rich in Civil War history. She sells antiques and nostalgic collectibles–old signs, bottles and so on. The place has a country store feel to it. “And it was a country store,” she tells me. “From 1895 when it opened, until 1984. I bought it twelve years later.

She points out the other buildings of note in the small village of Doswell. The brick train depot, the old bank, the hotel. “Most of it is owned by Roy Darnell,” she says.

On the North Anna River

After leaving her store, I head north again. It’s the last leg of the trip. As I near the North Anna River, an Amtrak train approaches. It is moving fast, 70 miles an hour, I’m guessing. I do what everyone does when they see a passing passenger train. I wave. I wave at the faces in the windows, remote, almost alien presences, untouchable, behind glass, retreating from what remains stationary, moving away like time in its flight. These faces move so quickly by, lost in a blur of speed, that it is almost impossible to see any one of them clearly. But my eyes compensate for the speed of the train, catch up with it, if only momentarily, and for a split second eye contact is made. I see a woman in the blink of an eye and know I could pick her out in a crowd. She sees me, as well. We make that tenuous contact. And then the train is gone and the passengers are moving into their futures along the old RF&P.