Electric Trains on the W&OD

Electrification arrived in 1912 after the Great Falls & Old Dominion Railroad and the Southern Railway’s Bluemont Branch were consolidated into the Washington & Old Dominion Railway. The new owners introduced modern interurban trolley cars, with wire strung above the tracks carrying electricity from the railroad’s own power plant in Rosslyn, Virginia. In 1917 service switched to the local utility company. By 1939, when a man was photographed departing a trolley near Bluemont, Virginia, the W&OD had been operating on electricity for 27 years, but aging equipment badly needed modernization. In the early 1940s the railroad obtained its first self-propelled diesel-electric and gas-electric engines, and diesel power proved so efficient that by 1944 it had replaced electricity.

Purcellville, Virginia · United States