In General
Map
Sights
Signals
Bridges
Fire & Police
Floobydust
USGS Maps

RICHMOND HOMEPAGE
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In General


Location / Name:
Richmond VA, No County: Richmond is independent, it is surrounded mostly by Henrico County, and Chesterfield to the west and south

What's Here:
Old Dominion Railway Museum
Norfolk Southern South Richmond Yard
CSX South Yard
CSX Fulton Yard - former C&O
Assorted Sundry Items

Data:
GPS Coordinates: as needed
Phone A/C: 804
ZIP: 23224

Access by train/transit:
Amtrak - On the northwest side of Richmond at Staple Mills Road, ~7.5mi

The Scoop:

Three of the areas yards are on this map, as well as the area's only railroad attraction: the Old Dominion Railway Museum.

Acknowledgements:
Dr. Frank R. Scheer
Denver Todd
RailsInVirginia.com
Google Maps
Bing Maps

Websites and other additional information sources of interest for the area:
http://thetracksidephotographer.com/2018/11/29/richmond-division-recollections-2/
http://www.railsinva.com/main.html
https://railphoto-art.org/collections/lamb/group-three/ great photos of southern railroads during the 60's!


Getting Here

From the downtown Richmond area you have a number of choices.  If you like doing the highway thing, you can take I-95 south and get off at exit 73.

By regular road from the downtown area, you can cross the river on 9th Street, 14th Street, or S Belvidere St (over the Robert E. Lee bridge).  On the "other side of the river, 9th St turns into Commerce Rd, 14th St turns into Hull St, and Belvidere turns into Cowardin Ave and the Jefferson Davis Hwy.

Cowardin is convenient to NS's South Richmond yard, and 14th/Hull Streets takes you right by the Old Dominion Rwy Museum.

Norfolk Southern's local office is off the end of McDonough St as you come off the 9th Street bridge onto Commerce.


Map



For the map in PDF form, click here




Sights


  CSX's Fulton Yard

This was a former C&O yard, and is located on the south eastern side of Richmond.















C
&O "R" Cabin

At the west end of the yard, adjacent to Orleans Street, stood "R" Cabin.  The tower controlled switches and signals at the west end throat of Fulton Yard.  The tower was a mechanical plant.  During the 1940's, a US&S CTC system was installed, and it then controlled everything from Rivanna Junction, to its eastern control point, a WB home signal near the Darbytown Road grade crossing - that was also the eastern yard limit for Fulton Yard.







  The Old Dominion Railway Museum

GPS Coordinates: 37.525930, -77.435637
http://www.odcnrhs.org/Museum.htm



Open on Saturdays (11am-4pm) and Sundays (1pm-4pm).
The museum is housed in a former Southern Railway station on the south side of Richmond.
When I stopped by in August 2011 with my daughter and her family, they were still working on the museum for it's grand opening.
Many thanks to them for letting us take a quick tour!



     


       

                 

               



  NS's South Richmond Yard





  CSX's South Yard & the Goodes St Crossing

GPS Coordinates: 37.510917, -77.428042 (at the crossing)
This grade crossing is adjacent to a short section of flood wall, and at the very north end of South Yard.

         

       

    Looking north.

      Looking south into the yard.

      This branch darts under I-95 and follows Deepwater Terminal Rd.





Signals


  CSX Signals

These two North/South signals protect a small crossing with a small NS branch.  The NS tracks don't appear to be signaled.

           

   


  SB CSX Color Light Signal

The following two pictures show that CSX has replaced the 2 C&O type signals on a cantilever bridge with a new single mast mounted color light signal :-(
Pictures are taken off of Gordon St, where it curves around by the tracks to 4th St.

      Looking south

  Looking north.

  





Bridges and Overpasses


CSX's Bridge over the St James River

This small bridge comes from the immediate downtown area, and heads to South Yard.





             


Underpass off of Gordon St, going under CSX





Back in downtown

Stopped here on the way out, will move to the other page one of these days :-)
The MOW truck was the only thing I saw moving during my short visit.
This is the eastern end of the elevated line going through downtown Richmond.









Under I-95

I know this is a highway bridge, however..... Interesting view looking north under I-95 from Maury St.





Fire and Police


Fire Station 13 - South Richmond

For now, Station 13 houses the oldest and newest equipment in Richmond.  Rescue 3 was the newest in 2011 when I got pictures of it.  The Hazardous Materials Unit is the oldest in service piece, dating back to either 1984 or 1987.

               

         

   

After taking all of the other signal pictures on this page, and as I was heading out to Richmond proper, I saw the engines from Station 13 way ahead of me.  I finally caught up to them on the bridge over the James River.


Floobydust



There's so much interesting stuff down here, so let's get busy.....


Maury St Crossing under I-95

The huge gates are flood control gates in case the James River decides to overflow it's banks.  You can find them all over the place, and the north side of the river in the downtown area has almost one continuous wall.



           



Maury St Crossing by 1st St

             



Retention Park and the Richmond Slave Trail

The Park was dedicated in April of 2012, nice view of the city from atop the wall.  The Slave Trail lets you walk along the south side of the James River.

             



Pipe Detail

The railroad tracks, being in the middle of a tank farm, goes over a bunch of piping for them.  Here's a detail shot on the north side.





Manhole and Cover

One of the other things around us that I find interesting are manhole covers - I think they tell another story about industrialized America.  You  don't see many like this around anymore, regardless of where you go!





Abandoned industrial tracks - by Dinwiddie and Commerce

The tracks go up along the "northern" side of Dinwiddie and served many business' along there.





       



Trucking companies

Ward Trucking and Xtra have terminals here.

   



Chasing Ghosts

Richmond has a plethora of railroad yards and trackage that are no longer with us, let's see what I can find....



ACL's Shops Yard

The Atlantic Coast Line had a yard by this name in South Richmond.

According to railsinvirginia.com: The yard had 10 tracks and a single mainline going through it, with a couple of rip tracks for the engines to lay over in between assignments.  He doesn't have a date for the completion of the yard, but it looks like it may have been in the late 1890's.  It was abandoned by CSX in the 1980's.

The ACL moved their Richmond area operation from Byrd Station to the Broad Street Station when it was completed in 1919.  Soon after, they shifted their engine maintenance to the newly completed RF&P Acca Yard in 1924.  For more info, visit the Rails in Virginia website.

In the aerial view, you can plainly see where the right-of-way used to be.







The open land where the yard used to be won't be for long, as of last year, something massive was being built...





ACL's James River Bridges

If you note, I called it "bridges", because if we examine the aerial view from Bing Maps, we can see the remnants of two sets of supports for bridges instead of just one.  If you look closely at the aerial shot, you will see larger bridge supports maybe every three or four smaller ones, most of which the river has "taken" off their bases.  Anyone have pictures of either of the old bridges?  According to railsinvirginia.com, the bridge was removed in 1970.  I've casually looked for pictures of either of the bridges, without success, so far.








USGS Maps

This map should answer any questions about where the railroad bridges crossing the James River are / were in relationship to each other.


Disclaimers:

I love trains, and I love signals.  I am not an expert.  My webpages reflect what I find on the topic of the page.  This is something I have fun with while trying to help others.

Please Note:  Since the main focus of my two websites is railroad signals, the railfan guides are oriented towards the signal fan being able to locate them.  For those of you into the modeling aspect of our hobby, my indexa page has a list of almost everything railroad oriented I can think of to provide you with at least a few pictures to help you detail your pike.

If this is a railfan page, every effort has been made to make sure that the information contained on this map and in this railfan guide is correct.  Once in a while, an error may creep in :-)

My philosophy: Pictures and maps are worth a thousand words, especially for railfanning.  Text descriptions only get you so far, especially if you get lost or disoriented.  Take along good maps.... a GPS is OK to get somewhere, but maps are still better if you get lost!  I belong to AAA, which allows you to get local maps for free when you visit the local branches.  ADC puts out a nice series of county maps for the Washington DC area, but their state maps do not have the railroads on them.  If you can find em, I like the National Geographic map book of the U.S..... good, clear, and concise graphics, and they do a really good job of showing you where tourist type attractions are, although they too lack the railroads.  Other notes about specific areas will show up on that page if known.

Aerial shots were taken from either Google or Bing Maps as noted.  Screen captures are made with Snagit, a Techsmith product... a great tool if you have never used it! 

By the way, floobydust is a term I picked up 30-40 years ago from a National Semiconductor data book, and means miscellaneous and/or other stuff.

Pictures and additional information is always needed if anyone feels inclined to take 'em, send 'em, and share 'em, or if you have something to add or correct.... credit is always given!  Please be NICE!!!  Contact info is here

Beware: If used as a source, ANYTHING from Wikipedia must be treated as being possibly being inaccurate, wrong, or not true.

RICHMOND HOMEPAGE
RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
RAILROAD SIGNALS HOME

2007_0414


NEW AUG10/2011, SEP13/2013, MAY02/2020, MAY18/2020, AUG09/2021, SEP14/2023
Last Modified 14-Sep-2023