The No. 316 in operation for the Texas Electric, 1939. Photo courtesy of Don Ross.

No. 316
An Unlikely Fate: From Rails to Residence & Back to Rails

The dining car of Bay Creek Railway, known for its history as No. 316, was built in 1913 by the St. Louis Car Company for Southern Traction.  The 316 was built as part of a 22 car order, meaning that all 22 “motors” were built identically. The cars in this order were numbered sequentially 301 through 322.

In 1917, Southern Traction was absorbed by Texas Electric and all 22 motors, keeping their original numbers, became cars in service of Texas Electric.  While it was the largest electric interurban railroad in Texas, the company ceased operations in 1948.

With the closure of Texas Electric, all 22 motors were put out for salvage.  It is unclear what the exact next steps were at the time, but the 316 eventually rested on the property of a dentist near Fort Worth, who used the car as a cabin on his ranch.

The History of the Railroad on the Eastern Shore of Virginia
The Eastern Shore as we know it began with the arrival of the railroad in 1884.

In 1883, after being settled for 260 years, the Virginia portion of the Delmarva had not changed much. Life here was much like it had been in 100 years before. Farmers and fisherman worked largely for local consumption.  Most essentials like clothing, shoes, buggies, etc. were made locally and bought or traded locally. Most commerce was waterborne and travel by land was slow; it took 12 hours to ride from Eastville to Horntown by stage.

Economic Boom
In 1884 the New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk railroad laid tracks and the peninsula's focus shifted from coastlines to the interior.  Hallwood, Melfa, Keller, Painter, Exmore, Cape Charles, and Parksley all evolved as the railroad grew. Commerce quickly grew more robust as farmers and fishermen adapted to ship their harvests to distant markets.

In the late 19th century, two men were primarily responsible for bringing the railroad, and dramatic change to the Eastern Shore. The first was Alexander Johnston Cassatt (1839-1906), son of an affluent family, who lived and studied in Europe until 1859 when he returned to the United States to obtain an engineering degree from Rensselaer.  In 1868, Cassatt married Lois Buchanan, niece of former President Buchanan, and began his career as a rising young executive in the Pennsylvania railroad. In 1882, after becoming the first vice president of the railroad, he resigned his post to devote himself to installing a railroad line down Virginia’s Eastern Shore to Cape Charles. 

At that time, William Lawrence Scott (1808-1891), a flamboyant coal magnate, congressman, and multimillionaire from Erie, Pennsylvania, was Cassatt’s friend and partner. It was Scott, in fact, who proposed the idea of a regional railroad down the Virginia peninsula to officials of the Pennsylvania railroad, among whom only Cassatt was interested.

Water Crossing Challenges
The purpose of the “Cassatt Line South,” as many referred to the project, was not to introduce the Eastern Shore to the railroad, but to link the southern produce of Norfolk with the growing markets of the north. A major set back to the link was the 26 miles of Chesapeake Bay water that separated Norfolk from the Delmarva peninsula. But, Cassatt eventually devised a radical solution.

In the summer of 1882, after scouting the region by horseback, Cassatt made two decisions that forever changed the future of the Eastern Shore.

First, Cassatt drew an almost straight line down the center of the shore, giving the railroad a direct route to the cape. Doing this meant it passed mainly through farmland and forest and came near only two villages, New Church and Eastville.

Second, Cassatt devised what for many was an outrageous plan to extend the rail line across the Chesapeake Bay to the Norfolk market. He bypassed Cherrystone, which for more than a century was the landing place for commerce between Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore. Instead, he chose an area just south of Cherrystone where the tracks would curve and end at the Chesapeake in an open field offering only a shallow creek.

His solution was to design a barge with railroad tracks large enough to ferry 18 freight rail cars. The new barges were in operation by April 1885, and the designs were later copied and used with great success around the world.

A New Rail Line, Town and Economy are Born
In 1882, backed by northern wealth, Cassatt had purchased the tracks that already led into Pocomoke City, Maryland, and from there he organized the New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk, known to the locals as the “NYP&N.” Construction began in April 1884 and was completed in November of the same year. At Cassatt's expense, the shallow creek at the end of the line was dredged into a deep harbor and connected to the Bay. Meanwhile, Scott paid $55,000 for 2,000 acres of farmland and timber at the terminus of the line and laid out a new city to be called Cape Charles.

On October 25, 1884, the tracks into Cape Charles were completed. The town was laid out with 644 fairly symmetrical lots with seven avenues running east and west named for prominent Virginians and five streets running north and south named for fruits and trees.  By 1886 it was one of the largest communities in Northampton and Accomack counties.  Populated largely by northerners, Cape Charles included a tavern, two hotels, a post office, a livery stable, several stores, and many homes and businesses.

Although Cape Charles was located on the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula, it was oriented to the urban north.  The town was home to the first Roman Catholic Church and the only Jewish congregations ever to assemble on the Shore.  In the late 1890s, Thomas Dixon Jr, who later gained nationwide fame as author of the novel “Birth of a Nation,” was the most famous resident of Cape Charles. He commuted to New York City each week by train so he could preach as a Baptist minister, which also helped inform northerners about the Eastern Shore of Virginia as a destination and growing community. 

William Scott, the town's founder, was its most prominent citizen. His home was just outside of town in a tract known as Hollywood Farm. There he frequently entertained, hosting dignitaries such as the governor of Virginia and President Grover Cleveland. Until his death in 1891, many people also came to enjoy the racetrack he built on his farm.

From its start, the NYP&N was a profitable line. A large amount of traffic in lumber, pig iron, cotton, vegetables, and other commodities came north from Norfolk while the Shore shipped out potatoes, strawberries, cabbages, onions, and seafood.  Because of an increase in traffic, improvements had to be made:  a parallel track was added while the tracks themselves upgraded from 60 to 80 pound rails; a block signal system was installed in 1908; and in 1912, telephones replaced telegraph dispatching.

New Church, Hallwood, Parksley, Tasley, Keller, Exmore, Birdsnest, Eastville, and Cape Charles were the 9 original stations on the Virginia section of the NYP&N.  Between 1910 and 1912, the railroad spurred a growth of 15 more stations, some of which also became towns.  These stations included Oak Hall, Horsey, Makemie Park, Bloxom, Onley, Melfa, Painter, Nassawadox, Machipongo, Chesapeake, Cheriton, Capeville, Townsend, and Kiptopeke.  The stations were identical at each point.  All were asymmetrical two-story buildings with ticket office, waiting room, storage on the first floor, and living quarters for the station agent on the second floor.

The first quarter of the 20th century was a “golden age” for the Shore: the railroad modernized communications, transportation increased the population, and villages grew bigger. Although the actual takeover didn't occur until 1922, NYP&N was leased in 1920 to Pennsylvania railroad for 999 years. With its dining car bright with fresh white linen and flowers, the “Del-mar-va Express” carried passengers to and from the Virginia Shore everyday. The Cavalier covered the same route at night while passengers were sleeping. The Sailor and the Mariner also ran daily while the Furlough only ran south on Sundays to carry naval personnel back to Norfolk after a weekend leave.

With the popularity of the automobile increasing in the 1920s, in 1923, the state began paving Route 13, the shore's main roadway. Two-thirds of the paved road paralleled the railroad tracks along the route Cassatt had chosen years earlier. 

An Industry Threatened
The railroad’s glory days came to a rapid halt during the depression, and in 1930 the Shore quickly transitioned from railroad to automobiles and trucks for transportation and commerce. In 1931, the same year route 13 was completed, Charles W. Harrison established a ferry to carry automobiles from Cape Charles to Norfolk. 

This downward trend in passenger and freight service was punctuated by World War II.  During the war, the railroad was the only form of transportation that could effectively handle the explosion of passenger and freight traffic. Older residents of Cape Charles still remember thousands of soldiers and sailors on the railroad wharf at one time and troop trains backed up for miles.

As rapidly as the railroad had been inundated with freight during the war, this freight disappeared after the war.  From a high of 1,000 rail cars a day transported across the bay during the war, this number dropped to approximately 400 cars a day in the early 1950s.

After the war, the American public forgot about the rationing of gasoline and tires, restricted travel, and crowded trains and turned to their automobiles as their preferred mode of transportation.

End of an Era – A Community Challenged
In 1950, even with the railroad still in operation, Cape Charles took a serious loss when the ferry was moved to Kiptopeke Beach. In 1953, the railroad's passenger steamer made its last crossing to Hampton Roads. The daily mail and express train was discontinued shortly afterward, and on January 12, 1958 the last passenger train headed north up the tracks from Cape Charles. 

After 68 years of having all the traffic up and down the shore run through it, Cape Charles was left off the beaten track.  Eight years later, and after the removal of the parallel tracks, only four full time and nine part time railroad depots remained in the two counties.

Rail business continued to decline and in 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the major force in Delmarva railroading for 87 years, ceased to exist as a separate corporate entity.  Because the railroad was in dire financial straits it merged with its arch rival, the New York Central Railroad, to form the Penn Central Railroad.

As part of the Penn Central System, the old NYP&N was viewed more as an insignificant feeder line than an important main line, and subsequently, track conditions and quality of service fell to deplorable levels.

In addition to the Shore, rail service throughout the Northeast worsened and when Penn Central filed for bankruptcy Congress was forced to provide a remedy. Congress formed a federally-backed entity known as the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) to acquire viable portions of the Penn Central Corporation.

The rail line south of Pocomoke, MD, along with the float operation, was viewed as a non-viable line and was on the list to be abandoned. In 1976, the two counties that would be affected, Northampton and Accomack, stepped in and formed the Accomack-Northampton Transportation District Commission (ANTDC), and by using a bond issue, the Commission purchased the railroad to preserve rail service on the Shore. In the beginning, the Virginia & Maryland Railroad was the operator of the rail line and in 1981 the operation was turned over to the Eastern Shore Railroad.

In 2005, after a number of years of declining traffic, the ANTDC decided to consider a new operator of their railroad. After reviewing all the proposals, Cassatt Management, LLC, d/b/a Bay Coast Railroad began operating the same rail line and barge operation that Alexander Cassatt envisioned and built in 1884.

Today, Bay Creek Railway operates as a passenger excursion line with its restored 1913 Interurban Dining Car, the No. 316, and the Bay Coast Railroad as the commercial freight line.