The following is an extended version of the article that appears in our April 2023 issue.
The 2,800-foot-long viaduct for the Richmond-Ashland Railway, seen here on June 25, 1907, remained standing long after the last electric car went across it in 1938. The image promotes the strength of the concrete, using a locomotive and two gondola cars loaded with scrap iron. The structure passed all tests, and limited service began a month later. (Photo courtesy Cook Collection, The Valentine)
The photographs of the massive concrete support stanchions of a railway viaduct resemble the ruins of an ancient civilization looming amid the backyards of the Carver neighborhood. Those towers indeed represented a past era — that of the Richmond region’s 61 years of electric-powered transit.
As with most things, however, within the seed of its conception lay the pit of its destruction. Private companies ultimately failed at management, and the succeeding power utility (today’s Dominion Energy) divested of its transit system due to national anti-monopoly legislation. The city, which eschewed authority from the outset, aside from granting often controversial contracts to operators, didn’t step in, and the cars were consigned to the flames of a Wagnerian pyre off Government Road. (See “Richmond’s Moving First” and “40 Moments: The Green Line.”)
A standalone electric railway conceived in 1905 and illustriously branded as the Richmond & Chesapeake Bay Railway Co. evolved from the grand vision of New York City transit magnate Frank Jay Gould. In 1909, he founded the Virginia Railway and Power Co., the ancestor of Dominion. Gould built the 12-story Electric Building at Seventh and Franklin streets to house administrative operations. A decorative rooftop feature included “cauldrons” through which the building’s heating system piped steam. Through the 1920s, observers looked up with amazement as spotlights illuminated the clouds. (Today, the repurposed Electric Building is the Edison Apartments).
Gould wanted a rail line running from Norfolk to Fredericksburg, through Richmond and Ashland, with eventual branches to Tappahannock and connections to Gloucester, Mathews and Middlesex counties.
Gone except for dramatic photographs are the impressive reinforced concrete bridges and the 2,800-foot-long viaduct, which crossed over Marshall Street and curved above Carver, the double tracks of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and the valley of Bacon’s Quarter Branch of Shockoe Creek on the way to the Brook Turnpike (now Brook Road).
The railway looms over the Carver neighborhood in 1955. (Photo courtesy Edith K. Shelton Collection, The Valentine)
“Concrete bridges were new to the United States,” Carlton Norris McKenney writes in his invaluable history, “Rails in Richmond,” “and because this was probably the biggest one on record … every step was watched and reported in the newspapers and trade journals.”
Gould at first considered operating steam trains until the electric-powered cars ran. Images of big locomotives hauling cars stopped on the bridge, with posing workers, served as publicity for the construction strength.
Gould’s line at first derived most of its power from the 12th Street Hydroelectric Plant — the remnants of which are a downtown mural gallery — with river-powered turbines. In 1910, though, those received replacement with two frequency converters located in a substation near the viaduct.
One of the several remaining components of the Gould idea is today’s Depot Building, part of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts at 814 W. Broad St. William C. Noland and Henry Baskervill employed the Beaux-Arts style for this elegant invitation to travel. The ground level contained shops for commuter convenience, while the upper spaces separated the “White” and “Colored” passengers.
A maintenance and storage building at 1620 Brook Road underwent notable rehabilitation in 2012 by Dovetail Construction using solar and geothermal energy, and now the “Emerald Barn” is used by Wetland Studies and Solutions.
McKenney describes how Gould desired cars both fast and comfortable for passengers traveling to Tappahannock and beyond. The four 39-ton, 55-foot motor cars resembled the steam railroad Pullman parlor cars, with mahogany paneling, high-backed seats, frescoed ceilings, smoking compartments and end vestibule doors to provide an aisle between cars. Other innovations included two cars linked by an accordion connection that allowed the cars to swivel on turns. McKenney says tests of the unloaded cars’ speed clocked in at 80 mph.
Moving Pictures
Gould’s grand vision didn’t work out, despite the lavish sums he spent on the project.
The rise of personal automobiles cut into the line’s profits, and the deaths of three people at a grade crossing near Ashland hastened the end of the line, which halted its run Dec. 20, 1917.
The Richmond & Chesapeake Bay Railway Co. went to auction. Richmond investors prevented the company’s infrastructure from being converted into scrap. They included American National Bank President Oliver Jackson Sands Jr. (who, for his bank, built Richmond’s first skyscraper, now 11-story apartments at 1001 E. Main St., and whose surname lives on with Sandston) and financier Jonathan Bryan, third son of Richmond Times-Dispatch publisher Joseph Bryan and his wife, Isobel.
The Richmond-Ashland Railway started running July 5, 1919. It boasted 14.8 miles of track with 19 stops and a full round-trip time of 40 minutes. The big luxury cars of the Gould line got traded out with four second-hand streetcars acquired from the Petersburg, Hopewell & City Point Railway in exchange for Richmond-Ashland common stock.
The track followed Brook for 2 1/2 miles, passing Westbrook Avenue and then turning through what became the Azalea Mall parking lot. A half-mile farther and with another turn, it continued in an almost straight line to Ashland.
The town’s three stops included the terminal at England and Maple streets, site of the present post office. Wood-framed shelters were placed at the wayside stops.
The line ran with few difficulties and some experiments to entice riders. This included a December 1923 mobile projection device installed on one of the cars. At one end, a black box containing a projector sent images to a translucent screen mounted at the trolley’s front. The various pictures mixed movie frames with cartoon drawings and safety messages. This display so engrossed passengers that some rode past their stops.
Such gimmicks couldn’t battle increasing deficits caused by greater use of personal automobiles and buses. On Aug. 27, 1937, the State Corporation Commission ordered the Richmond-Ashland line to cease operations “forthwith,” but it took a few months.
At 11:10 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, 1938, the last car left Ashland, crammed with nostalgic riders. The continuous whistle blowing alarmed residents along the course, and passengers belting out “Auld Lang Syne.” McKenney recalls, “On arrival in Richmond, the fans removed every souvenir possible from the station. … At 1 a.m., motorman Nelson Edwards left the car in the barn and left by automobile to his home in Glen Allen.”
The removal of the tracks and the massive concrete bridge supports took almost another 30 years due to indecision about responsibility and attrition by deterioration — chunks began falling, some weighing 40 pounds, and foolhardy residents clambered up to remove the ties for firewood.
The Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority demolished a section of viaduct for the George Washington Carver School and housing. Further removal came with construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, later Interstate 95. By the early 1960s, 350 feet of the once-great viaduct remained between Clay and Catherine streets. Lillie Thomas, of 810 W. Clay St., led a personal campaign to the city for ridding Carver of the “dinosaur.” On February 22, 1965, Mayor Morrill Crowe swung a gilded sledgehammer to knock a chip off the concrete. McKenney wrote how a “wrecking ball finished the job.”
Rail to Trail
Over the next several years, the former rail line will in phases become a trail. Along the way and at the former trolley stops will be markers and information about the Richmond-Ashland line’s history and the characteristics of nearby neighborhoods.
PlanRVA, the rebranding of the Richmond Regional Planning District Commission, is working with the National Park Service and in collaboration with the counties of Hanover and Henrico, the town of Ashland and the city of Richmond.
This effort is to take the form of a biking and hiking trail connecting to the planned 43-mile Fall Line trail running between Ashland and Petersburg. PlanRVA estimates that the entire project is about two-thirds funded, but there is no fixed end date, nor full cost estimate at this time.
The Fall Line trail is amid the design-build procurement and funding phases at local, regional and state levels, including the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Central Virginia Transportation Authority.
Phil Riggan, a PlanRVA transportation planner, says Ashland has already completed its segment. Henrico’s 7 1/2-mile section will likely come next, around 2025 or 2026. “They’ve got funding for most of it,” Riggan says. “Just like their roads, Henrico is in charge of its own trails.”
Each locality is applying through grants and working with VDOT. Richmond’s portion is somewhat easier to build as much of it is alongside existing roads and bike lanes.
Meanwhile, PlanRVA seeks stories and ephemera related to the Richmond-Ashland Railway to use on markers and through QR code reading and online access. Learn more at falllineva.org.
