Something that has been a bit of a conundrum for me over the years is what type of business, exactly, was located at 3400 K St during my modeling era, 1945-55 and what exactly the structure looked like. On the 1954 B&O Form 6 (which describes rail customers, siding lengths, freight agents, locations, etc.) it reads “Chestnut Farms-Chevy Chase Dairy”, 4-car length, milepost 10.4. The siding does not appear on the 1941 Form 6.
Maps have varying names listed for the industry located at 3400 K St.:
1888 Sanborn: vacant flour mill & coal house
1903 Sanborn: Crystal Plate Ice Co. & vacant
1919 B&O map: no name, just “2 Story Brick“
1921 Baist: American Ice House
1928 Sanborn: Crystal Plate Ice Co.
1954 B&O Form 6: Chestnut Farms-Chevy Chase Dairy
1959 Sanborn: National Dairy Products Co.
1963 B&O map: W.S. Brenizer and “Brewery” (I suspect it was The Guggenheim Co.)
I decided to go back through photos and maps I have in my files to see if I can get an idea of what type of structure existed at this spot over the years. I’m starting way back, long before the railroad came to town because I think the history and background is pretty special. The first image comes from the year the Civil War ended. Georgetown looked pretty different back then than it does now.
First map reference is a snip from an 1888 Sanborn Map. Note the 3400 K St. location is occupied by a Vacant Flour Mill and a Coal House, visible in the photos above. Also note the prominent overhead coal trestles which were used to transload coal from canal barges on the C&O Canal to ships docked on the Potomac River wharves.
And here is a detail from the above map:
Here is a clip from a Sanborn Map from ca. 1903. Remember this pre-dates the arrival of the B&O (1910), but the Georgetown Barge Dock and Elevated Ry. Co. had been incorporated in 1889.
The business is listed as Crystal Plate Ice Co. Within the warehouse are “Freezing Tanks” and “50 Ton Ice Machinery” and an attached “Cooling Shed.”
A photo by Theodor Horydczak shows the site ca 1920s, likely the late 20s. Note that the building appears to have been either been razed, rebuilt or heavily renovated and the Key Bridge is now complete.
It appears that in the 1940s an addition was made on the east end of the block. I believe sections of the older structure (from the 1920s era) remain, but it seems that some of the structures were replaced.
It is likely the structure was changed when the Whitehurst Freeway was being constructed, ca 1946:
I hope you enjoyed this photo tour of the 3400 K St. location. I commuted from Bethesda to Rosslyn by bicycle for a few years and every morning and evening I walked up and down 34th St past this location from K St to the bridge over the C&O Canal and on up and over Key Bridge. Often I would ponder the history of the building and what came before. When I was commuting, it was a fitness center / gym and various professional offices. No doubt more research is in order to get more details on the businesses that operated here, but this is a good start. When I have more information, I will post an update.
As some of you may or may not know, there are remains of a wrecked boxcar located on the Georgetown Branch just a bit north of the Dalecarlia tunnel. The wreckage has been somewhat of a mystery as to how it happened, where the car came from and why it was partially scrapped in place. I first got wind of this discovery in 2014 when some photos were shared online:
The underframe center section sat further in the woods and was dragged closer to the right of way during a cleanup event by locals. Lots of folks (including myself) developed theories on just how the car came to be where it lay. In 2019 I visited the site with my friend Kelly and snapped many photos of the wreck. This past Fall I circled back on my notes and spent some serious time studying the photos I had taken and correlating details on the wrecked car with photos of other steam era freight cars. My goal was to hone in on what type of car it is and where it may have came from. I created a presentation (which you can download below!) that outlines my findings. The TL:DR is that I believe it’s a B&O class M-26 (X-29) boxcar that was wrecked in the flood of 1942 near Fletcher’s Boathouse. The car was likely loaded on a flatcar, useful sections scrapped from the car and the flood-mangled carcass tossed by the wayside in an area away from the National Park land (C&O Canal) which is where it rests today.
I hope you enjoy my journey to solve this riddle and I welcome any and all questions or comments. If you think there’s something I may have missed or got wrong, it would be great to hear from you! I am not an expert in freight cars, but over the last few years have taken a major interest in studying steam era freight cars and prototype modeling. (I now own a couple ORERs and various other reference books which are wonderful resources!) Please have a look at the presentation and leave your comments below!
Yesterday I had lunch in Silver Spring with a friend and was reminded of the fine photos taken by Dr. Ira Pearlman on Sunday, Ocrober 24, 1954. This NRHS excursion traversed the Georgetown and Alexandria Branch lines. The train was pulled by B&O GP7 743 and consisted of three passenger cars. Here we see a couple shots from 1954 and the view as it looks today. Enjoy!
I’d like to get back one day to take more detailed/composed shots, as these snapshots were serendipitous after we had lunch across the street. To view the rest of Dr. Pearlman’s wonderful photo set, please visit my Gallery. Hope you enjoy them! I snapped a few additional photos:
A couple years ago I met Chris Brown who was writing a book on the history of the Washington Canoe Club. He was one of the founding members of the CCCT and had accumulated a very large collection of slides documenting the early years of the CCCT’s efforts to convert the Georgetown Branch into a rail trail. In the early 1990s, the rail trail concept was a relatively new one and converting the Georgetown Branch would prove to be a great challenge. The efforts of the CCCT members paid off and the success of the Capital Crescent Trail is a testament to their hard work. I spent a few years in the early 2000s commuting from Bethesda to Rosslyn via the CCT and its during that time that I really fell in love with this little branch line.
Chris generously involved me in the slide review and cataloging process which was eye-opening, with many views of the right of way as it existed in the 1990s before being and during its conversion to a rail trail. I hope you will enjoy this large collection of slide scans!
Found this great creek-level view of the Rock Creek Trestle just before it was demolished over on the BridgeHunter website. Some of the bents have been removed, and it is shown in its final days, but it’s great to have a visual time capsule of the bridge and surrounding area.
I have long heard legend of a caboose that sat forlorn on a siding in Bethesda in the years after the railroad was abandoned. Apparently a private owner had parked the caboose there for future restoration or display, but instead it sat, torched by an arsonist and rotting away until finally being removed.
I have no idea of the disposition of the caboose or of its heritage. The only B&O caboose I could find that resembles this one is an I-10 class, but it may be a stretch. There appear to be numbers on the side of it, but the only one I can definitively read is an eight and perhaps a five to the left. I believe it sat on the siding just south of River Rd. on the west side of the tracks; the location of the old oil unloading siding.
If anyone knows any additional information about this caboose and its heritage, I’d love to hear it!
PS. I have a large collection of images shot in the years after the Branch had been abandoned and during its conversion to a rail trail that I will be sharing over the coming months. Stay tuned!
July 26, 1942, 10:32am. Newly-shopped B&O V-2 class 4-6-4 locomotive 5340, the “Lord Baltimore,” heads up a westbound train #21, “The Washingtonian,” as it pounds across the crossover at Georgetown Junction. The iconic locomotive was built by in 1935 by the B&O at its Mt. Clare shops in Baltimore, MD. In 1942, it was shopped and assigned #5340. The locomotive was scrapped seven years after this photo in April, 1949. The Washingtonian ran between Baltimore, MD and Cleveland, OH from 1914 to 1956.
I recently struck gold whilst looking for Georgetown-related articles in the Library of Congress “Chronicling America” online newspaper archives. One such article really blew me away, no pun intended! It details how on October 18, 1912 three batteries of field artillery normally stationed at Ft. Myer traveled from Tobyhanna, PA to Georgetown in DC via the B&O. The troops had been in PA for exercises and came to town in a series of three trains, each 20 cars long carrying all of the troops, officers, horses, and their equipment, including the artillery pieces!
The yard was cleared and special equipment had been prepared to facilitate the speedy offloading of all equipment and personnel. The troops then marched up 30th St., west on M St. and over the Aqueduct Bridge to Ft. Myer. I can only imagine what a spectacle this must have been for the locals. Imagine, the scene! The B&O’s Georgetown Terminal was in its infancy at this point and had only been operational for about two years. This would have been a major undertaking and a real test for the personnel working there. Apparently the special equipment created for the exercise was preserved for future troop activities. I haven’t found anything else to indicate there were more of these exercises.
There has long been discussion by folks in the B&O circles about whether troop trains went down the Georgetown Branch and the consensus was generally “yes” due to the proximity to Ft. Myer and downtown DC, in general. This is the first time in recent memory I’ve found information about such movements and I hope to find more. The timeframe I model includes two major conflicts; WWII and the Korean War. There is a good chance that at some point there was a special movement of troops via the GB to support an activity in the area.