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46-644: The Centreville Military Railroad was a 5.5-mile (8.9 km) spur running from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad east of Manassas Junction across Bull Run and up the south side of the Centreville Plateau. Built by the Confederate States Army between November 1861 and February 1862, it was the first exclusively military railroad. Ultimately, the Centreville Military Railroad reached

92-683: A better defensible position, he concentrated his troops on the Centreville Plateau, the high ground between Little Rocky Run and Bull Run along the western edge of Fairfax County, with his main supply base at the Manassas Junction in his rear in Prince William County, Virginia . The Centreville Plateau is located about six miles (9.7 km) north of Manassas Junction (modern Manassas, Virginia ). The Confederates built an elaborate series of connected forts and military positions, and

138-556: A bridge. One of the longest trestle spans created was for railroad traffic crossing the Great Salt Lake on the Lucin Cutoff in Utah . It was replaced by a fill causeway in the 1960s, and is now being salvaged for its timber. Many wooden roller coasters are built using designs similar to trestle bridges because such a structure can be strong and support a high track path while using

184-676: A charter to the O&;A on May 28, 1848, to run from Alexandria to Gordonsville. Construction began in 1850 and was completed in April 1854, when it connected with the Virginia Central Railroad in Orange County . Its longtime president was John S. Barbour Jr. , a Virginia lawyer, part-time delegate and son of U.S. Representative John Strode Barbour . In 1854, the General Assembly granted

230-510: A deserter that the railroad construction was in progress. By February 5, 1862 the construction was still proceeding, but no ballast was being used, as is typically needed for drainage and stability of rail beds, and the ties were being spaced a twice the normal spread. It is estimated that the railroad was probably not finished before the first week of February, 1862, but was in successful operation as early as February 17, 1862. The rail line designed used long lazy-S curves, paralleling west along

276-437: A higher elevation. Timber and iron trestles (i.e. bridges) were extensively used in the 19th century, the former making up from 1 to 3 percent of the total length of the average railroad. In the 21st century, steel and sometimes concrete trestles are commonly used to bridge particularly deep valleys, while timber trestles remain common in certain areas. Many timber trestles were built in the 19th and early 20th centuries with

322-456: A line. Private McClellan of the 9th Alabama Infantry Regiment commented in his diary on November 23 that 50,000 men were working on a six-mile (9.7 km) railroad in shifts of six hours per day, causing them to have no time for working on winter huts. By November 30, 1861 newspaper articles reported two months would be necessary to build the planned railroad. Construction began in December from

368-519: A point near a modern McDonald's restaurant on Virginia State Route 28 , south of the modern junction with U.S. Route 29 in Virginia . Gen Joseph E. Johnston faced a Federal force superior in size, while his own Confederate Army of the Potomac was spread thinly across central Fairfax County, Virginia , at Minor’s Hill, Flint Hill, Pohick, Accotink, Annandale, Munson’s Hill and Mason’s Hill. To prepare

414-424: A relatively small amount of material. Since loads are well distributed through large portions of the structure it is also resilient to the stresses imposed. The structure also naturally leads to a certain redundancy (provided that economic considerations are not overly dominant). Such wooden coasters, while limited in their path (not supporting loops), possess a certain ride character (owing to structural response) that

460-608: A three-day stagecoach journey. The O&A was strategically important during the Civil War (1861–1865) and was repeatedly fought over and wrecked. In connection with the Virginia Central, it was the only rail link between the belligerents' capitals at Washington and Richmond. An 1861 Union Army attempt to gain control of Manassas Junction led to the First Battle of Bull Run , and the junction traded hands numerous times during

506-480: Is a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by closely spaced frames. A trestle (sometimes tressel) is a rigid frame used as a support, historically a tripod used to support a stool or a pair of isosceles triangles joined at their apices by a plank or beam such as the support structure for a trestle table . Each supporting frame is a bent . A trestle differs from a viaduct in that viaducts have towers that support much longer spans and typically have

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552-531: Is a modern structure with a long expected lifetime compared to a wooden trestle. Being less susceptible to fire damage in this brushy location is also an advantage. The approaches to the Kate Shelley High Bridge near Boone, Iowa, are steel trestles. New Orleans utilizes steel trestles to support parts of I-10 , the Pontchartrain Expressway , and Tulane Avenue . Also, trestles support

598-515: Is appreciated by fans of the type. The Camas Prairie Railroad in northern Idaho utilized many timber trestles across the rolling Camas Prairie and in the major grade, Lapwai Canyon. The 1,490-foot (450 m) viaduct across Lawyers Canyon was the exception, constructed of steel and 287 feet (87 m) in height. The floodway of the Bonnet Carré Spillway in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana,

644-748: Is crossed by three wooden trestles each over 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in length. The trestles are owned by the Canadian National Railway (two trestles) and the Kansas City Southern Railroad. The trestles were completed in 1936, after construction of the Spillway. The trestles may be the longest wooden railroad trestles remaining in regular use in North America. A coal trestle is a rigid-frame trestle supporting train tracks above chutes, used to deliver fuel to boats or trains beneath it. At

690-455: The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during raids. Trains, pressed into service from the Orange and Alexandria Railroad ran on the line from Manassas Junction from about the second week of February, 1862 until March 11, 1862 when Confederate forces withdrew southward. While the railroad was exclusively designed only for resupply of the army, on a temporary and light track, an issue soon arose about

736-569: The Great Lakes ports of Buffalo (on Lake Erie ), Sodus Point and Oswego, New York (both on Lake Ontario ). In the United Kingdom, timber trestles were relatively short-lived as a structural type, one of their major uses being to cross the many deep valleys in Cornwall on the spinal rail route through the county. These were all replaced by masonry viaducts. Few timber trestles survived into

782-656: The Norfolk Southern Railway . The main exceptions are a short segment between Orange and Gordonsville , which is part of the similarly named Washington Subdivision of the Buckingham Branch Railroad ; and the easternmost portion that traveled through Old Town Alexandria to its waterfront, which no longer exists aside from the Hoofs Run Bridge and the Wilkes Street Tunnel. Parts of

828-681: The Richmond and Danville Railroad , which went bankrupt in the Panic of 1893 . The following year it was merged into the Southern Railway . A cutoff between Orange and Charlottesville was incorporated in 1876 as the Charlottesville and Rapidan Railroad and opened in 1880. The Southern Railway acquired the line in 1914. Most of the O&A right-of-way is now the Washington District line of

874-666: The Shenandoah Valley . The railroad boosted Virginia commerce. Farmers from Virginia's Piedmont region, and later, the Shenandoah Valley could more cheaply ship their products, produce, and goods to the markets of Washington, D.C. , and Richmond , and to ocean-going vessels berthed at the Potomac River port of Alexandria. Alexandria, Richmond, and Lynchburg also became manufacturing centers. Passengers could travel from Washington to Lynchburg in eight hours instead of enduring

920-555: The Shenandoah Valley . Quickly taking action, the B&;ORR provided a full report with a detailed description of their property on May 24. The Union Army replied on June 7 that it intended to keep and use the rails, and President Garrett again responded on June 9 that he absolutely needed the rails for the more serious need of repairing the B&O rail line to restore services there, which were more vital to overall Union Army needs. The Union Army finally complied with Garrett’s request and by

966-406: The earthmover made it cheaper to construct a high fill directly instead of first constructing a trestle from which to dump the fill. Timber trestles remain common in some applications, most notably for bridge approaches crossing floodways , where earth fill would dangerously obstruct floodwater. For the purposes of discharging material below, a coal trestle carried a dead-end track, rather than

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1012-507: The 20th century. Two that did, and which are still in daily use, cross the Afon Mawddach on the coast of Wales only a few miles apart, at Barmouth and Penmaenpool . The former, built in 1867, carries trains on the heavy rail Cambrian Coast Line travelling from England via Shrewsbury to the various small towns on Cardigan Bay . It also carries a toll-path for pedestrians. Road traffic at this location has to travel many miles around

1058-548: The Centreville Plateau and move south of the Rappahannock River to counter Major General McClellan’s movements to Hampton Roads, Virginia . On March 11, 1862, the Confederates quickly abandoned their positions, tore up as much track as possible, leaving much of the rail lying in place, and destroyed the trestle bridge across Bull Run. Federal troops entered and occupied the area on that same day and decided to rip up and "use

1104-716: The Confederate cavalry and advanced pickets and vedettes controlled the countryside as far east as Fairfax Courthouse. The army went into camp and built winter quarters in Centreville which were protected by strong fortifications. The logistics of supplying 40,000 Confederate troops on the front lines grew worse with wet weather in October, so they withdrew even more into Centreville. Behind the lines, warehouses were built at Manassas Junction. Chapman (Beverly) Mill in Thoroughfare Gap , at

1150-789: The Federal officer charged with the responsibility of capturing Richmond after Major General Irvin McDowell had failed in July, 1861. McClellan identified another route to Richmond that would bypass the Bull Run defenses - sail the Union Army down the Potomac River to Fortress Monroe, then march up the Peninsula past Williamsburg to Richmond. The operation of the railroad was very short lived, as General Johnston decided on March 9, 1862 to abandon his defensive positions on

1196-555: The Federal quartermaster made a decision on May 20 to take 6.5 miles (10.5 km) of inventoried and captured Confederate rail from this railroad and use it on other needed Union Army rail projects. The following day, B&ORR President John W. Garrett send a letter of protest regarding the intended Federal re-use, having found out that the Union Army planned to use the rails to repair the Manassas Gap Railroad for help in resupplying Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks in

1242-456: The Manassas Junction. "It is no mystery that the iron for the track came from the South's one unfailing source of supply in 1861, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ." A deserter from the 6th Louisiana Infantry, who left Centreville on January 7, 1862 reported that 300 men were working on the railroad project. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency confirmed on January 27, 1862, based on the report of

1288-664: The O&A the right to build southward from Charlottesville to Lynchburg. O&A paid for trackage rights over Virginia Central tracks from Gordonsville to Charlottesville. In 1860, the southern extension was completed, including lucrative connections to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad and the South Side Railroad . The O&A also connected with the Manassas Gap Railroad (chartered in 1850), at Tudor Hall (today named Manassas for this junction) which gave it access to

1334-589: The O&ARR tracks at Manassas Junction. On December 14, 1861, the newspapers reported that the new line was fully surveyed, was being leveled and that the line would run four miles (6.4 km) to Bull Run and then two miles (3.2 km) beyond that to the rear of the army. The rails, by order of Captain Thomas R. Sharp, were brought in from warehouses where they were being held in storage in Winchester, Virginia by wagon down to Strasburg, Virginia , and then by rail car to

1380-646: The border of Prince William and Fauquier counties, also served as a supply depot. Over one million pounds of meat were stored there in the winter of 1861-62 to feed the Confederate Army of the Potomac . As winter approached the wagons hauling supplies from Manassas Junction up the old Centreville Road turned the roadway into muddy mire. By October 19, 1861, the Centreville Road had been planked to help alleviate this problem, but with no success. By early November, Quartermaster Major Albert Marle discovered that

1426-431: The end of July 1862 the rails of the Centreville Military Railroad were all returned to the original rightful owners, the B&O Railroad. "Once its rails were removed virtually all traces of the world's first military railroad were speedily obliterated by undergrowth. For all but a very few its brief existence was soon forgotten." Orange and Alexandria Railroad The Orange and Alexandria Railroad (O&A)

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1472-651: The estuary to cross at either (for light traffic) the second trestle bridge, at Penmaenpool, which is a toll bridge; or (for heavy traffic) at Dolgellau even further up the estuary. Trestles in cast- or wrought-iron were used during the 19th century on the developing railway network in the United Kingdom. These generally carried decking consisting of some form of trussed girder, as at Crumlin Viaduct, Belah and Meldon ; though two rare examples, at Dowery Dell (demolished in 1962), and Bennerley had lattice girder decks. The steel trestle at Martinez, California, shown below,

1518-403: The expectation that they would be temporary. Timber trestles were used to get the railroad to its destination. Once the railroad was running, it was used to transport the material to replace trestles with more permanent works, transporting and dumping fill around some trestles and transporting stone or steel to replace others with more permanent bridges. In the later 20th century, tools such as

1564-584: The former O&A right-of-way are also used by Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express (VRE). The O&A built the first transportation tunnel in Virginia: the Wilkes Street Tunnel in Alexandria, Virginia, opened in 1851 but completed in 1856. Located just a few hundred yards west of the Potomac River, it connected the wharves to the rest of the line. The area around the tunnel became known as "Tunneltown", part of an African-American neighborhood called "Hayti". By

1610-582: The mid-20th century. it was a shantytown and squatter's haven known as "Owens Beach". Revival efforts began in 1968 when an old row tenement on the NE corner of Royal and Wilkes was turned into luxury apartments called Tunnel Flats. As wharf traffic declined and Alexandria became more suburban, daily trains through the tunnel decreased to two a day. One, the Southern train to the PEPCO plant, last ran on November 25, 1969. This

1656-484: The old Centreville Road. It ran four miles (6.4 km), crossing Liberia Plantation, then across a new special trestle bridge constructed on Bull Run. It ran another one and a half miles (2.4 km) north of Bull Run and finished in a terminus on level fields at Mertoff Farm. The gauge is presumed to be 4 ft 8 in ( 1,422 mm ) narrow gauge , matching the O&ARR and Manassas Gap Railroad , which it spurred from, and used T-rail acquired from

1702-406: The ox teams being used to haul the wagons were eating too much fodder to make the logistics operation practical. The idea of building a railroad, using spare and captured parts, became a viable option to ox carts and wagon teams on the muddy Centreville Road. However, on November 7, 1861, the Orange and Alexandria Railroad (O&ARR) disapproved a request to using any of their rails to build such

1748-513: The railroad with the help of various politically connected financiers and his brother-in-law J.S.B. Thompson . In 1867, the O&A merged with the Manassas Gap Railroad (led by Edward Carrington Marshall ) to become the Orange, Alexandria and Manassas Railroad . After the Panic of 1873 , the railroad was consolidated into the Virginia Midland Railway , which was controlled by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad . It later became part of

1794-555: The sick all the way to Charlottesville. On March 1, 1862 Major Barber issued orders to Captain Thomas Sharp regulating the operations of the railroad, specifying the types of loading for sick, for lady passengers, supplies, baggage, and requiring daily reports. Federal soldiers examining the earthworks from a distance came to believe the defenses at Centreville were virtually impregnable. The Confederate defense line along Bull Run appeared too strong to Major General George B. McClellan ,

1840-490: The slightly worn rails for repairs elsewhere in Virginia." On May 7, 1862, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&ORR) began trying to recover property from the abandoned rail line after making an inspection trip on April 30. The B&ORR claimed that their rails were uniquely identifiable, and knew they had been stolen during Virginia Militia and Confederate operations as part of the Great Train Raid of 1861 . However

1886-411: The top of the trestle, rolling stock (typically hopper cars ) open doors on their undersides or on their sides to discharge cargo. Coal trestles were also used to transfer coal from mining railroads to rail cars. They were prominent when coal was an important fuel for rail locomotion and steamships , before they were replaced with mechanical coal loaders during the 20th century. Coal trestles were used in

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1932-574: The transportation of heavier loads of sick soldiers. Initially the locomotives used were under-powered for hauling large loads of sick soldiers and General Johnston did not allow use of the trains for transporting the sick. Later, larger locomotives were brought in and Johnston changed his mind, allowing evacuations of the sick south to the large Confederate hospital located in Charlottesville, Virginia . The Orange and Alexandria Railroad company disagreed with Johnston’s decision and actions, but were over-ridden by order of Johnston to Major Barber to transport

1978-555: The war. Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson attacked it in the Battle of Manassas Station Operations to draw the Union into the 1862 Second Battle of Bull Run . The 1863 Battle of Brandy Station and Second Battle of Rappahannock Station were also fought near the railroad line. The railroad entered Reconstruction in dire shape, with much of its track ripped up and most of its rolling stock destroyed. However, Barbour rebuilt

2024-473: Was a railroad in Virginia , United States. Chartered in 1848, it eventually extended from Alexandria to Gordonsville , with another section from Charlottesville to Lynchburg . The road played a crucial role in the American Civil War , saw the first of many mergers in 1867, and eventually became an important part of the modern-day Norfolk Southern rail system. The Virginia General Assembly issued

2070-465: Was a symbolic run, made at walking speed with children hanging from the train and dignitaries on hand. An employee walked in front of the locomotive as it went down Union Street, stopping to let shoppers and diners move cars that were parked on the tracks. The other train, to the Robinson Terminal at Duke Street, ceased in 1974, and the tracks were pulled up in mid-October 1975. By 1980, the city

2116-406: Was seeking federal funding to turn the tunnel into a bike trail , which was done before 1999. In 2003, the city added a crosswalk to Union Street to connect the tunnel to the park on the other side. In 2007-2008, the tunnel was refurbished, receiving steel reinforcement ribs, more and brighter lighting, drainage improvement, and extensive pavement repairs. Trestle bridge A trestle bridge

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