“The Ghosts of Eckington Yard”

Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States of America.? (D.C. is an abbreviation for the District of Columbia.)? Like many cities, it has streets, and many of its avenues are named for the U.S. states.? One of its many entryways is a street known as New York Avenue.? What is special about New York Avenue?? Well, of course, it is named for the U.S. state of New York, but, before air travel, as New York City was the Gateway to North America with many ships passing by the Statue of Liberty, New York Avenue serves as a gateway into Washington D.C. for cars making the road famous for its massive traffic jams.? Before the Interstate Highway System as U.S. Routes were the way to travel across the nation, much of the traffic passing through the city came down New York Avenue as U.S. Routes 1 and 50 came down this road.? (Today, only U.S. Route 50 follows New York Avenue as U.S. Route 1 was rerouted.)? As you sit in traffic on New York Avenue, you notice that it follows an electrified railroad line.? (It was originally owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad but now owned by Amtrak.)? As you get closer to downtown, you see the railyard.? You climb a hill, you see the yard below.? Then you cross a bridge, and you do not see the yard anymore.? You see condos, high price condos.? The condos are part of the Eckington community, but what is special about those condos?

As mentioned, Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States of America.? It is one of the most visited cities in the world.? It is a city with a lot of history.? Although the city is not famous as a railroad city, there is much railroad history here.

So, what is special about those condos in Eckington?? The story begins when the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the nation’s first commercial railroad, came to the nation’s capital.

Until the 1970’s, New York Avenue was a roadway were there were many warehouses.? When you heard the traffic reports on New York Avenue, a warehouse was always used as a location.? The most famous warehouse was the Hecht Company warehouse.? Many of these warehouse were served by railroads.? As you travelled down New York Avenue through Eckington, you saw boxcars being loaded and unloaded.? During the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Inaugural, you saw Pullman Cars at that site as, before airplanes, executives had their own private railcars.

That it just a small part of the story.

As the railroad lines went along New York Avenue before going south to Union Station, there were warehouses on the north side and south side of New York Avenue with many of the warehouses served by either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad that passed through the yard and went north.? The yard continued along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line about a mile north of where the Pennsylvania Railroad went south towards Union Station.? (Both the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad served Union Station.)? In the 1970’s, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority took up a small section of the yard to build a yard for its subway trains.? Things changed as many of the warehouses either closed or began using trucks.? In the 1980’s much of the rails were removed, and much of the land was sold.

Today, as you drive along New York Avenue, you see only the Amtrak trains in the yard in what was called the Ivy City Yard.? The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line, now owned by the Chessie Seaboard System (CSX), only pass through making no stops except to wait for an Amtrak Train going north from Union Station.? What was once Eckington Yard now has a bike path where you can walk along where railroads once ran, and you can see where the railroad spurs once were.? You can walk under New York Avenue and watch the trains going in and out of Union Station to points north to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston and points west to Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Chicago, and see the old Capital City Arena where a band called the ‘Beatles’ performed their first concert in the United States of America.? (It is no longer an arena, but the building still stands.)? Although Eckington is a completely different place than it was, as you walk through, the ‘Ghosts of Eckington Yard’ may come out to greet you.