At Piedmont Station, now Delaplane, trains were used for the first time in history to move troops to an impending battle. On July 19, 1861, the fields around this stop on the Manassas Gap Railroad were filled with thousands of volunteer soldiers from Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate Army of the Shenandoah, and a single steam locomotive was available to carry the army to Manassas Junction, which was threatened with Federal attack. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson’s 1st Brigade, ordered there from its bivouac in the meadows just south of Paris, was loaded onto freight and cattle cars for the first transport, which took eight hours to cover the 30 miles to Manassas. On Sunday morning, July 21, Jackson’s troops marched from Manassas Junction to Henry House Hill to take part in the first major battle of the Civil War, where Jackson earned the title “Stonewall.” That same day, the final brigade to leave the station was delayed when its train collided with an unspecified obstruction, and Confederates, suspecting sabotage by railroad officials, held a military trial, found the conductor guilty of bribery and intentionally wrecking the train, and executed him on the spot.