Pans Up in Virginia!
by Art Peterson
All photos are from the Valentine Collection, preserved by the Krambles-Peterson Archive
You could be forgiven if you read this title and thought “Ah – the Pennsylvania Railroad in Potomac Yard.” But it turns out there was another property in Virginia that (briefly) relied on pantographs and catenary for its traction power collection/distribution. This property was also a rare example of GE’s single-phase alternating current application.
The Richmond & Chesapeake Bay Railway (R&CB) was a project on which Frank Jay Gould of New York (youngest son of Jay Gould) was a key backer. Mr. Gould would also be involved in the establishment of the Virginia Railway and Power Co. in 1909. In the case of the R&CB, the franchises were being granted during 1906 (for example, the Richmond Municipal Franchise [with a 30-year term] was granted on March 22, 1906). The order for the four interurban cars required to run the planned service was given to St. Louis Car during 1906, as well.
The project to construct the line extended into late 1907, by which time the nation was entering a financial panic that spread through the trust houses, most of which were based in New York. The trust houses competed with banks for deposits, but typically had very little cash reserves, compared to deposits, making them highly susceptible to runs. This is exactly what occurred in late 1907. The result was a systemic financial panic that saw the nation’s industrial output fall by 17%, while the real GNP declined by 12%. One positive aspect of this crisis was that it led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank.
The most immediate impact of the crisis for the R&CB was that hoped-for expansions would not take place. Electric railway publications of the era frequently mentioned extension of the line to Washington, DC, while Gould was thinking along the lines of a Norfolk to Fredericksburg connection. As was typical of the era, even the road’s name implies that it hoped to eventually build east from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay, but that tight credit and loss of confidence in the wake of the 1907 panic ensured this would not happen.
With only a 10-year existence for the single-phase AC operation, there are not a ton of photos of the R&CB during this period. Still, we hope you find them of interest. The captions below provide a bit more behind the R&CB story. The photos are presented in chronological order.
R&CB 104 - St. Louis Car - December 3, 1906
There’s no traceability as to who decided to ink in the thoroughly inaccurate trolley pole and hook on the roof of the 104 in this shot of the substantially complete car at the car builder’s plant. The pantographs and roof-mounted headlight would be installed in Richmond – R&CB’s yard/shop (still standing) was located on Brook Road on the north side of Richmond. The Baldwin trucks used under these cars clearly stand out in this view.
R&CB 101 - Approaching Richmond Terminal - ca. 1907
The road was built to very high standards. You can see a portion of the reinforced concrete viaduct in this view which extended for the first 2,800 feet on leaving the Richmond Terminal, and at some locations reached a height of 70-feet. Publicity photos of a steam engine and freight cars were taken on the viaduct to demonstrate its strength. The car is sitting on the switch that led into the double-track terminal, placing this location around Marshall or Clay Street in Richmond. The terminal headhouse building still stands, adapted for other purposes, on Broad Street at Laurel.
R&CB 103 - Upham Brook, near Hilliard Road - ca. 1908
As mentioned previously, the line was built to extremely high standards – no grade more severe than 1% was allowed, and no curve tighter than 2 degrees was permitted. A 1914 tabulation indicated the cost of construction of the R&CB totaled in excess of $996,000. Considerable use of reinforced concrete structures was included on the R&CB mainline. With this construction work being completed in late 1907 (the line entered operation on October 28, 1907), this project immediately pre-dates the Lackwanna’s extensive undertaking using reinforced concrete construction on the New Jersey Cutoff, which was built between 1908 and 1911. The bridge shown here still stands today.
Sprague-GE M Type MU control was used on the R&CB cars. Two oil-cooled compensators and associated contactors carried undercar were used to step down the 6600 volts to the proper voltage for the traction motors. A system of “duplicate control” was provided on these cars where a compensator and respective contactors were associated with a pair of motors on the car, allowing the car to continue operation in a two-motor configuration in the event of a failure. Ed. note: The CA&E, or AE&C as it was known at the time, was ordering 600V interurban cars with "duplicate control" at this time as well.
R&CB 103 - Gwathmey Church Road - ca. 1908
This location is about two miles south of Ashland, with a decent crowd on-board the southbound car. Ashland’s central Virginia location has led to the city advertising itself as the “Center of the Universe.”
R&CB 101-Class - Unknown Location - March 6, 1912
Fiscal Year-end (June 30th) results for 1912 showed that the R&CB had gross earnings of $54,286 on operating expenses of $44,858. Net earnings that year were $9,428, however the interest totaled $60,119, leading to a deficit for the year of $55,270. R&CB operated a total of 171,967 passenger car-miles that year and carried 374,726 passengers during its FY.
Unfortunately for the R&CB, the deficit situation continued to prevail year after year. The annual deficit in the period 1911-1913 averaged $53,139, but the accumulated deficit by June 30, 1913 totaled $310,307. The Electric Railway Journal of January 12, 1918, reported that the R&CB had ceased operations. By the magazine’s March 20, 1918, issue it was noted that Garnett Tabb had secured the option to buy the dormant road.
Re-organized as the Richmond-Ashland Railway, the road was converted to 600V DC operation and it replaced the St. Louis-built cars with second-hand equipment (double-truck city cars) from nearby Virginia properties. The line to Ashland continued to run in this manner for the next two decades.
The demise of the AC operation on this line is likely due to the same cause as we saw in the earlier blog installment on the Indianapolis & Cincinnati Traction (I&CT) – the hoped-for economies failed to materialize. While the I&CT had a better traffic base (more on-line communities, longer hauls, decent freight traffic), the R&CB lacked many of these important facets and could not offset the interest expenses. Earnings and expenses per car mile for the R&CB were reported in the 1914 “McGraw Electric Railway Directory.” For the FY1911 period, the R&CB was making a profit (before interest was calculated) per car-mile of $0.063, but by FY1913, this profit per car-mile was down to $0.023.
Acknowledgements: Several industry publications (as noted above) were consulted to put a little more meat on the bones of this piece. Numerous on-line sources were reviewed to include local context. As always, the willingness of Randy and Frank to publish this on the blog is most-sincerely appreciated!
This article was edited by Frank Hicks.
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