Visiting Stafford, Virginia

Hi,
I'm visiting Stafford, Va in a couple of weeks. Will be there from a Sunday evening to a Wednesday morning.
I know nothing about the area. Any railroad related items worth visiting close by? Thanks.

toddsyr wrote: ↑Sun Oct 06, 2024 4:27 pm Hi,
I'm visiting Stafford, Va in a couple of weeks. Will be there from a Sunday evening to a Wednesday morning.
I know nothing about the area. Any railroad related items worth visiting close by? Thanks.

Probably about 20 or 25 miles further south on the old Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Petersburg (now CSX) from Stafford, is Ashland, VA. That is probably the best-known location on the old RF&P where you can see trains running down the main drag of a quaint Southern town. It's not "street running" in the more common sense of railroading, but is a mainline railroad running through a town where there's a street on both sides of the tracks.

Thank you for the reply. I will see if I can fit that in!

Todd - Stafford, VA today is an outer suburb of the Washington, DC/Arlington and Alexandria, VA area...

I decided to pull out an RF&P timetable with mileages between Washington, DC and Richmond, VA for reference:
The former RF&P Main Line is basically today's CSX route...
0.0-Washington Union Station
8.2-Alexandria
21.0-Lorton (Amtrak Auto Train Terminal)
34.7-Quantico (US Marine Corps Base)
45.4-Brooke (Stafford area)
54.1-Fredericksburg
91.7-Doswell (Junction of Buckingham Branch Railroad)
98.7-Ashland (CSX tracks running through the center of town)
113.5-Richmond Broad Street Station

Interstate 95 basically parallels the RF&P/CSX/Amtrak route southward.
Virginia Railway Express operates commuter rail service between Washington and Fredericksburg.

I will second HS's mention about visiting Ashland, VA - the one problem was the underestimated mileage
between Brooke/Stafford and Ashland...For a further look Virtual Railfan has a video camera set up there
that can be found on YouTube...I will add Doswell with the "Smashpenny Junction" antique store as one
place that I have visited in the past on my own travels...

As a geography buff and folded map collector I would study first the Virginia state map and local maps
of the Washington, DC metro area along with the appropriate VA county and city maps for Fredericksburg
and Richmond prime examples of what I would obtain and use...On your drive south I suggest a stop at a
Virginia Welcome Center for a variety of maps and other pertinent information...MACTRAXX

Thanks for the post Mactraxx.
Looks like the only Virginia Welcome Center near my route at all is the one in Fredericksburg, Southbound 95 at mile marker 132.
That's further south than I'm traveling but I found a website for it that lists things to do, attractions etc.
https://www.virginia.org/listing/virgin ... urg/29724/
That should be of some help.

Well, I have to keep everybody else on the trip happy too so...
We will be taking one of the D.C. guided tours. We will board the Virginia Rail Express at Brooke and take that to D.C. and back. At least it will be fun riding on the old RF&P!

Back from the trip. Riding the VRE from the Brooke station to L'Enfant station in D.C. was pretty cool. Several abandoned sidings along the way which of course is still interesting to a railfan. Looked like at least a couple were still used too. Just couldn't see any freight cars or such things.

We toured part of the Smithsonian American History Museum while in D.C. too. Part of that entails several railroad exhibits, including a steam locomotive that was once part of the Southern Crescent, a replica of The Jupiter, one of the John Bull, a Chicago Transit Authority car, a Matson Container display and a streetcar from 1900.

The road trip down and back also enabled us to see many different rail lines. One of the highlights was the side trip to drive under the Martins Creek Viaduct. I've seen the Starrucca and Tunkhannock Viaducts before, but this one was new to me. The rail yards in the big cities were cool to see also.

Thanks everyone for your input.