The Manassas Gap Railroad was a standard gauge railroad that ran 87 miles west from the Orange & Alexandria Railroad at Manassas Junction, Virginia. It continued to Front Royal and Strasburg in the Shenandoah Valley before turning south to Edinburg and Mount Jackson, Virginia. In addition to the main line, in 1860 there were a little over 3 miles of sidings.
The Manassas Gap Railroad was the first railroad to cross the Bull Run Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. It captured traffic from the central part of the Valley that previously had been hauled by wagon to Winchester and taken by the Winchester & Potomac and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads to Baltimore.
The Manassas Gap Railroad was chartered in 1850. Construction started in 1851 from Manassas Junction. By 1852 track reached The Plains, in 1853 Linden, and in 1854 Strasburg. Terrain forced the engineers to bypass Front Royal by about a mile, and a spur was built into the town. Mount Jackson was reached in 1859 before the war halted further construction. At the beginning of the Civil War the railroad had 9 locomotives and 223 cars.
Uncompleted Branch Lines
In 1854 grading was started for a new branch line from Gainesville eastward through Chantilly, Fairfax Court House, and Annandale. The plnned line would then follow the Indian Run stream valley to Backlick where it would cross the Orange & Alexandria mainline, and parallel it into Alexandria terminating on the Potomac River at Jones Point. Grading also began on another branch line that would extend westward from Chantilly to a point near Purcellville. This branch line, known as the Loudon Branch Railroad, was projected to be later extended from Purcellville to Harper’s Ferry and a connection with the B&O RR and the C&O Canal.
But an economic downturn in 1858 caused the Manassas Gap RR to halt all construction of these branches. Three years later the war broke out, and construction was never resumed. Remnants of the grading that was completed can still be seen in the Manassas National Battlefield Park, where the unfinished railroad bed was used as a defensive position by confederate General Thomas Jackson’s men in the Second Battle of Manassas.
The Manassas Gap Railroad in the Civil War
The railroad played an important role at the very start of the war. The Confederacy chose Manassas Junction as the place where it would concentrate its major army in the Eastern Theater. The two railroads that met there were able to bring in troops from all over the Confederacy. They also brought in supplies, especially food from the rich Shenandoah Valley.