The Orange & Alexandra Railroad was a standard gauge railroad that ran from Alexandria to Lynchburg, Virginia during the Civil War. Its strategic location led to a number of battles along its route and freqent destruction by both armies.
The railroad was chartered by the Virginia Assembly in 1848 to run from Alexandria to Gordonsville. The plan was to divert traffic from the Virginia hinterland away from the Maryland-based Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The railroad’s President was John S. Barbour, Jt., a Virginia lawyer and member of the Virginia Assembly. The headquarters for the railroad along with a yard and its shops was established on the waterfront at Alexandria.
Before the War
Track began to be laid in 1850. In October of 1851 it reached Tudor Hall, the future Manassas Junction. While the Orange & Alexandria built onward toward Culpeper the Manassas Gap Railroad branched off at Tudor Hall and built west. The Manassas Gap Railroad was the first railroad to cross the Bull Run Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. It would reach Strasburg in 1854 and Mount Jackson in 1859.
The Orange and Alexandria reached Gordonsville in April of 1854. It connected there with the Virginia Central Railroad, which ran east to Richmond and west to Charlottesville and Staunton in the upper Shenandoah Valley. That year the Virginia Assembly granted the O&A a charter to run from Charlottesville to Lynchburg. This extension was completed by 1860, making a connection with the South Side Railroad running east to Petersburg and the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad running west to Tennessee. The Orange & Alexandria paid the Virginia Central for trackage rights to use its rails on the twenty mile gap from Gordonsville to Charlottesville.
Both the railroads that connected with the Orange & Alexandria at Lynchburg were broad gauge roads. Standard gauge roads used tracks that were 4′ 8 1/2″ apart, while broad gauge roads used tracks that were exactly 5′ apart. This tiny difference nevertheless meant that cars could not be taken from one road to another, but had to be unloaded, the cargo haued to the other road’s loading area, then reloaded on the second road’s cars – a time consuming and manpower intensive process.
These connections were beneficial to the port of Alexandria as well as the resource-rich Shenandoah Valley. Crops and other products that had formerly been hauled by horse-drawn wagon from the upper Valley to Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock River were now being moved cheaper and faster by train to the Potomac at Alexandria. Cargo which had been taken by wagon from the central Shenandoah to the railhead at Winchester and by the Winchester & Potomac and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads to the port of Baltimore was now going to Alexandria and to the growing market of Washington City.
in 1858 at the other end of the railroad, the Orange & Alexandria chartered an affiliate, the Alexandria & Washington Railroad, to build a six mile connection from the Alexandria yards to the foot of the Long Bridge across the Potomac. From there cargo would be transferred to wagons to be carried into Washington or to be loaded on Baltimore & Ohio trains to be carried north. But no direct rail connection would exist until after the war began.

War comes to the Orange and Alexandria
It was quickly apparent that the Orange & Alexandria would have great strategic importance as the rail link between Washington and Richmond. The Confederacy began to concentrate its first major army at Manassas Junction, using the railroads to transport troops to the front and bring in supplies to support them. Throughout the Civil War major battles would occur along the railroads and at major railroad junctions as both sides fought to contol vital communications lines needed to supply the large armies.
After the Confederate victory at the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) the Orange & Alexandria was pressed to its capacity to supply Confederate forces in Northern Virginia along a single track line with few sidings. At the same time its headquarters, main yard and shops was behind Union lines, and would remain so for the rest of the war. Engines and rolling stock saw little or no maintenance along with the track and support structures.
Withdrawal to the South
Confederate General Joseph Johnston’s withdrawal in March of 1862 came as a surprise to nearly everyone, and the already overloaded railroad was unprepared for the additional surge of traffic. The single track line simply couldn’t handle moving tens of thousands of troops, artillery, and supplies in a short time.
One casualty of this shortfall was the million tons of meat that was stored at the huge packing plant at Thoroughfare Gap along the Manassas Gap Railroad. There simply wasn’t the capability to move it in the short time allowed. Some was distributed to passing troops and even to the local civilian population, but most of it was eventually burned to keep from it falling into Federal hands – a memory that must have been painful to the starving Confederate veterans at the end of the war.
For a time the focus of the war moved to Federal General McClellan’s campaign on the Virginia Peninsula east of Richmond. For a while the Orange & Alexandria became a backwater. The Federals now controlled the railroad from Alexandria past Manassas, where a large supply depot was established. This part of the railroad was repaired and run by the United States Military Railroad establishment.

August 1862: Lee Strikes North
After the failure of McClellan’s attempt to take Richmond, Lee wanted to move the focus of the fighting north, away from Richmond and if possible out of Virginia altogether. To do this he sent Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s Second Corps north to grab the attention of the Federals and force them to pull troops north. Lee would follow with the main army and seek battle with the Federals outside Washington, where a victory might lead to capture of the capital and an end to the war.
Jackson knew the best way to get the Federal’s complete attention. He drove his fast moving corps, nicknamed the “foot cavalry,” around the Union flank to strike at the most sensitive pressure point he could reach – the vast Federal supply camp at Manassas. His men first destroyed two supply trains and a stretch of track at Bristoe Station, then moved the four miles north to Manassas when scouts told him it was almost undefended.
What followed was an orgy of looting and destruction:
“The Federal depot was “vast storehouses filled with . . . all the delicacies, potted ham, lobster, tongue, candy, cakes, nuts, oranges, lemons, pickles, catsup, mustard, etc. It makes an old soldier’s mouth water now just to think of the good things captured there. . . . Some filled their haversacks with cakes, some with candy, others with oranges, lemons, canned goods etc. I know one that took nothing but French mustard . . . it turned out to be the best thing taken because he traded it for meat and bread. It lasted until we reached Frederick.”
Private John H. Worsham, 21st Virginia Infantry
“One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry:
His Experience and what He Saw During the War 1861-1865,
Including a History of “F Company”
After a day of feasting and outfitting themselves with clothing and equpment provided by the U.S. Army, Jackson ordered what was left to be put to the torch. He then took his men off a short ways to hide in the woods and await the anticipated Federal response and the arrival of the rest of the army under Lee which resulted in the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run).

Split at the Rappahannock
As Lee moved across the Potomac into Maryland and headed west with McClellan in pursuit, neither side had control of the northern part of the Orange & Alexandria. It was not until Ambrose Burside relieved McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac and advanced on Fredericksburg, Virginia that Federal forces began to restore the battered railroad. The southern half of the road, meanwhile, was well positioned to bring up supplies for Lee’s army that was defending the south bank of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers.
This was the situation from December of 1862 until May of 1863, through the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.
In 1863 a new bridge was constucted across the Potomac capable of carrying rail traffic and connecting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad with the Orange & Alexandria. This greatly reduced the burden of moving supplies to the ever-growing Federal armies in Northern Virginia.
June-July 1863: The Gettysburg Campaign
Lee had gained the initiative after his defeat of Hooker at Chancellorsville. His plan was to move his army into the Shenandoah Valley and advance around the Union flank, moving into Pennsylvania and seeking to decisively defeat the North on the home ground. Before he could get his movement underway, Union cavalry struck J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate troopers as they concentrated around Brandy Station along the Orange & Alexandria. The battle was a draw, but it may have goaded Stuart into his disastrous ride around the Union army that kept him out of touch with Lee until the Battle of Gettysburg was joined.
Lee’s line of advance and retreat from Gettysburg through the Shenandoah Valley largely spared the Orange & Alexandria from further destruction during the campaign. By September both armies had returned to positions along the Rappahannock River, centered on the supply lines of the Orange & Alexander coming from both north and south.

October 1863: The Bristoe Campaign
In October Lee once again seized the initiative and tried to outflank the Army of the Potomac to the west. But Meade fell back along the line of the railroad and prevented Lee from getting behind him. At Bristoe Station just west of Manassas two of A.P. Hill’s Confederate Brigades were mauled when they advanced without reconnaissance and ran into an entire Federal corps hidden behind the Orange & Alexandria’s embankment. This took the steam out of Lee’s offensive and he fell back to Culpeper, wrecking the railroad as he went. Meade slowly followed over the next month, repairing the wrecked railroad. For a while the the war had become the perfect contest between two West Point trained engineers, moving along, destroying and rebuilding lines of supply.

1864: The Overland Campaign
The Orange & Alexandria continued to supply both armies until the start of the Overland Campaign in May of 1864, although by this time in the war the amount of supplies coming through the Confederate side of the pipeline was far less than what came from the north. The Confederacy wasn’t manufacturing locomotives or rails or even many cars. So when equipment was wrecked or destroyed or simply wore out it had to be replaced from other places in the system that needed it less. The results were that Confederate branch lines and sidings were torn up to keep main lines operational, average train speeds dropped to a crawl due to unsafe and defective equipment, and breakdowns and derailmenrs were frequent.
As Grant pushed Lee back to Richmond and bottled him up in the Siege of Petersburg, the armies once again left the Orange & Alexandria behind. Confederate raiders still wrecked and robbed trains and burned bridges but the major role of the O&A in the Civil War was over.
The Postwar Years – Panics and Mergers
The Orange & Alexandria at the end of the war was little better than a wreck. Its track and right of way were ripped up and patched back together many times and its engines and rolling stock were largely destroyed. But President Barbour, who had served as a Confederate officer through the war, used his political and financial connections to begin the rebuilding process. In 1867 the Orange & Alexandria merged with the Manassas Gap Railroad to create the Orange, Alexandria & Manassas Railroad. After the financial panic of 1873 the railroad was consolidated into the Virginia Midland Railway, which was under the control of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. After another series of mergers and another financial panic the railroad was merged into the Southern Railway. In 1982 the Southern Railway merged with the Norfolk & Western Railroad to form the Norfolk Southern Railway, one of the four main railroads in the Unite States today.
Remnants of the Orange & Alexandria today
Most of the line of the old Orange & Alexandria remains as an important part of today’s Norfolk Southern Railroad. One exception is the very end of the railroad through Old Town Alexandria and to the waterfront area along the Potomac, where the tracks have been removed and the area is being developed for both commercial and residential use. But you can still ride on much of the old Orange & Alexandria Railroad line today on both Amtrak and Virginia Rail Express passenger trains.