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Built by the Eastern Shore Public Service Company in 1947 to house two diesel powered electric generators and subsequently acquired by Delmarva Power, the Museum Building served as a peaking unit facility into the 1980s. As such, its two engines and electric generators were run only during periods of peak demand, such as unusually hot weather. One of the engines, a 16 1/2″ bore Busch-Sulzer diesel fuel injection model, remains in the building as a permanent exhibit. It has been re-engineered to run as a demonstration unit, and the motion of the pistons and crankshaft can be viewed through Plexiglas windows.In early 2019 the society funded $54,500 of critical work on the building exterior including repairs to bricks, mortar, terracotta coping at the top of the building, and replacement of window lintels.

The main museum building is a large brick structure that for many years functioned as the town's electrical peaking plant. The building is now used to house the Cape Charles Museum and features permanent and temporary exhibitions that highlight the unique history of the town. In addition, the museum also serves as the welcome center for visitors to the town of Cape Charles.

Museum Building

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The town of Cape Charles was born suddenly in 1884, after a wooded marshy area was selected by two wealthy and powerful businessmen from Pennsylvania to be the site of a direct overwater railroad connection between Norfolk and the lower Delmarva Peninsula. By avoiding the costly and time consuming process of unloading and reloading freight between railroad cars and steamers, this route would provide an efficient alternative to the east coast mainland rail line, linking the northern cities of Philadelphia and New York with Norfolk and the south via the Eastern Shore. The project required extending the existing railroad line south from Pocomoke MD to Cape Charles, and creating a harbor with “float bridge” docks by means of which the fully loaded railroad cars could be moved from the end of the tracks onto “car floats” to travel across the Bay to Norfolk, where they would again be connected to locomotives. The car floats, later called barges, had from one to four sets of parallel tracks, and were pulled by tugs. For passenger traffic, “railroad transfer steamers” were designed to accommodate Pullman cars, so that passengers from New York could have a through passage all the way to Norfolk. The two men, Alexander J. Cassatt (1839-1906) a vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and William L. Scott (1828-1891), a coal and railroad magnate, raised the capital, laid out the rail line, started the town, dredged the harbor, built the first railroad yards, and formed the New York, Philadelphia &amp; Norfolk Railroad (NYP&amp;N) in 1884 to run the operation. In 1899 Cassatt became president of the PRR. The NYP&amp;N was highly profitable into the 1920s and was acquired by the PRR in 1922. The town was a busy place for many years: four trains a day from NY, with automobile ferries added in 1931. But in 1950 the ferries moved to Kiptopeke Terminal seven miles south; Pennsylvania RR steamer service ceased in 1953, passenger trains in 1958. Freight passage via the link to tug and railroad barge ceased in 2009. The architecture of Cape Charles houses has surprising aesthetic and historic interest thanks to a wide variety of styles and gingerbread ornamentation on the older houses. There are also fine examples of Sears Roebuck mail order houses from the 1920s.

The Cape Charles Museum and Welcome Center opened in 1996 and is dedicated to preserving and presenting to the public the history of Cape Charles and surrounding areas.   The Museum is owned and operated by the Cape Charles Historical Society. It is the hope of the Historical Society that inspiration from the richness of its past will help guide Cape Charles' renewal and growth. 



Dredging began on a small creek in 1883 to form the Cape Charles Harbor. The harbor was completed in 1885 by the New York Philadelphia &amp; Norfolk Railroad to provide a terminal for passenger steamers and railroad car floats. Over time, due to shifting sands and currents, the harbor began to fill in. In 1896, the harbor was restored to a depth of 16 ft. and width of 70 ft. and a 400 ft. stone jetty was constructed at the north end. By 1900 the jetty had been lengthened several times to its final length of 1600 feet which extended it to the Cherrystone channel. This little house sat at the beginning of the north jetty and was most likely built at the time of completion of the jetty. It was used to control navigation lights on and adjacent to the jetty, as well as a fog bell which sat at the other end of the jetty where a second smaller jetty house stood. While the north jetty still stands, the jetty houses were removed at some point and this one became a backyard play house in Cape Charles until its origins were discovered and is was donated to the Historical Society. What happened to the smaller jetty house is unknown.

In front of the Bloxom Station sits a small white building. This building is known as the “Jetty House” because of its original location on the north jetty of the Cape Charles Harbor.  If you peek inside the door of the Jetty House you can see objects and tools similar to those that may have been kept inside the building during its use. 

Jetty House

This building is the reconstructed railroad passenger station that once served Bloxom, Virginia, a town about 44 miles north of here. Built in the early 1900s, the station conforms to the architecture used in Pennsylvania Railroad passenger stations of the time: four doors, oversize arched roof brackets, a dormer, and overhanging roof to provide shade in summer and facilitate solar heating in winter. A bay on the rear gave a view of trains coming along the tracks from either direction. The station went out of service in the 1950s and 30 years later was scheduled for demolition. In the nick of time, Tom and Jan Noonan, known locally for rescue and restoration of historic buildings, acquired the station and carefully dismantled it, saving key structural elements in the hopes that one day it could be recon-structed. In 1999 the Noonans donated the pieces to the Cape Charles Historical Society for that purpose. Reconstruction was completed in 2006 with the help of two T-21 grants from VDOT. Of the original materials the roof brackets and beams, rafters, windows, and some flooring were used, and thanks to information provided by the Noonans and work of local architect Leon Parham, the building is very close to the original. The interior has been kept as two open spaces to enable adaptive reuse as an archive storage and work area.

Beside the main museum building to the west, stands the Bloxom Station, a reconstructed railroad passenger station. The Station houses the majority of the archival and artifact collections held by the Cape Charles Museum. The Museum's collection consists of thousands of photographs, documents, and objects that tell the stories and help preserve the history of Cape Charles.   

Bloxom Station

Our Caboose is now in its 5th life. Originally built for the Wheeling &amp; Lake Erie Railroad in 1948-49 (1st life), in its Ironville, Ohio shop, it is 34 feet + 3 inches long and weighs 22.7 tons. A bright red caboose, long a trademark of American railroads, was the last car on a freight train and served as an office, on the road living quarters, and a vantage point from which the crew could spot difficulties on forward cars and alert the engineer in the locomotive to dangers on the track.On December 1, 1949, the Wheeling &amp; Lake Erie Railroad merged with the New York, Chicago &amp; St. Louis Railroad (2nd life), which opened in 1882, and ran from Buffalo, New York, through Cleveland, Ohio, to Chicago, Illinois. This railroad was always known as the Nickel Plate Railroad, a name coined by the Norwalk (Ohio) Chronicle, which referred to the planned railroad as "the great New York and St. Louis double-track nickel plated railroad."On October 16, 1964, the Nickel Plate Railroad merged with the Norfolk &amp; Western Railroad (3rd life) and the caboose passed into its hands. And times changed. Computers began to forward the waybills (documents which show the destination and contents of railroad cars) to destination yards and stations. Conductors and crews no longer needed on-board offices and living quarters, and end of train devices now monitor the air brake pressure and transmit the readings to the engineer up front.So the familiar red caboose at the end of a freight train is no longer needed. The Norfolk &amp; Western Railroad donated this caboose to the Tidewater Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (4th life), who then donated it to the Cape Charles Historical Society on September 22, 2001 (5th life). With its colorful history, we had a choice of three names for the Caboose. As you can see, we chose Nickel Plate Railroad.

Located behind the main museum building, positioned on the railroad tracks, is one of several railroad cars owned and maintained by the Cape Charles Historical Society. This caboose was built in 1948 and had a long and colorful history prior to it becoming part of the Museum's outdoor exhibits.

The Nickel Plate Caboose

Railroad car floats were first used during the Civil War by Herman Haupt, a former chief engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad who had assumed responsibility for building the railways and bridges that the Union Army needed to move troops and equipment efficiently. The first car floats operated in the Potomac in 1862. During the 1870s, the B&amp;O Railroad employed a car float across the Potomac, and the concept was soon adopted by other commercial railroads to move freight, especially perishables, across waterways where bridges and tunnels were impractical. The PRR “navy” also operated car floats and passenger ferries in New York Harbor and the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Camden. The railroad adopted the term “bay barge” to distinguish the vessels in its Chesapeake Bay service from those used on its shorter routes. The Captain Edward Richardson remained in service longer than any other barge in the Chesapeake Bay service, while its associated railroad changed hands from the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Penn Central (1968) to the Virginia &amp; Maryland Railroad (1977) to the Eastern Shore Railroad (1981) to the Bay Coast Railroad (2005). On March 13th, 1981, the Captain Edward Richardson began to take on water a few miles from Cape Charles. She sank just thirty feet from the dock while loaded with tank cars, boxcars, and a switching locomotive, as well as ten new pickup trucks. The Captain Edward Richardson was salvaged and returned to service only to sink once more, this time in deep water, on October 30th, 1981. The Captain Edward Richardson was again raised but she lost her cargo of boxcars and her original deckhouse. A replacement was built by a North Carolina shipyard. This second deckhouse was removed in the mid-1980s when the Eastern Shore Railroad decided to abandon the vessel’s manned steering capabilities and the required crew. The deckhouse was moved into the railyard at Cape Charles where it served for a time as an office. This bay barge had been named for Armel Edward Richardson, longtime boatmaster on the western side of PRR’s Chesapeake Bay service, who had formerly captained one of the railroad’s steamships called the Pennsylvania. In 1981, the Eastern Shore Railroad renamed the bay barge the Nandua, in keeping with a trend to give its vessels names with local meaning. Around the same time its tugboats, the Philadelphia and the Chicago, were renamed the Accomack and the Northampton. The railroad’s other barge was named the Debedeavon. Debedeavon was a seventeenth-century Accawmack chief who left his chiefdom to his daughter Nandua, charging her to maintain good will with the English settlers. The Nandua continued to operate without her deckhouse and with her capacity downsized to twenty to twenty-five freight cars, often carrying loads too high or wide for railroad tunnels. In 1992 and again in 2009, the Nandua was refurbished at considerable cost. She last sailed in 2012. The Nandua was sold in 2018 to a used equipment dealer called Iron Planet which resold the vessel to a contractor specializing in marine construction, dredging, and other marine services.

This structure was the elevated deckhouse of the car float, or bay barge, originally named the Captain Edward Richardson. The vessel was built by New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR). It was launched in December 1948. The Captain Edward Richardson was over four hundred feet long and over fifty feet wide. Its deck was equipped with four railroad tracks designed to hold thirty-two forty-foot freight cars. The vessel was built to be towed by a tugboat across twenty-six miles of water between the harbors at Cape Charles City and Little Creek, Virginia. Its original deckhouse included a pilot house with steering gear, as well as a galley, captain’s quarters, and bunking facilities for a crew of five.

Captain Edward Richardson/Nandua Deckhouse

In US railroad terminology, a gondola is an open-topped railroad car with low side walls used for transporting high-density and loose bulk materials. It is a handy car for hauling all sorts of items, and all railroads had them. This gondola car dates from the 1930s and was acquired by the Eastern Shore Railroad in the 1980s along with 5 or 6 others. Here in the railroad yard it hauled tanks to spray track, moved tools and equipment around, and carried railroad track and ties to Pocomoke. It was also used as a 'reach' or 'spacer' car. Positioned between the locomotive and the cars to be loaded onto the car float barge, it enabled the locomotive to push them onto the barge without it having to come to the edge of the loading dock. How did a workhorse railroad car acquire such a colorful name? By the early 19th century coal had become a major U.S. energy resource. Initially shallow draft flat wooden boats were used to float the coal down the Potomac River from the West Virginia coal mines to markets around Washington D.C. The boats were named gondolas after the famous shallow-draft Venetian boat propelled by a gondolier using a sculling oar. At its destination both the boats and cargo were sold, and the boatmen returned home by foot. With the opening of the Baltimore &amp; Ohio Railroad in 1830 the railroad took over this coal trade, and the name gondola moved to the car designed by the B &amp; O specifically for transporting coal. Early gondola cars were wooden and their contents had to be shoveled out by hand. In 1905, the Ralston Steel Car Company patented a flat-bottom gondola with lever-operated chutes that allowed the gondola to be unloaded automatically from the bottom. The chutes would direct the contents of the gondola to the sides, a significant innovation. Gondolas have remained central to transport of coal. High sided open coal carriers used today are still called gondolas. Inside coal mines they are known in the U.S as mine cars, in the UK as tipplers or chaldron wagons. Gondola cars have also been adapted worldwide for a variety of specialty haulage tasks with a corresponding array of names: bathtub gondolas, track ballast gondolas, side tipping wagon gondolas, and hopper cars for those with the chute opening at the bottom.

Unfortunately, this car is no longer on site. In May 2021 Canonie Atlantic informed CCHS that in preparation for sale of the rail yard the track on which these two cars sat had to be cleared. As our siding was not long enough to accommodate them, we opted to sell them to a private railroad collector in Goshen VA where they will join his fleet of cars, which he plans to develop into a railroad museum. We have retained the photos and descriptions for general interest.Behind the flatcar sits our rare, steam-era former Southern Railway low-side gondola car originally built by Pullman in 1938. This car was a workhorse designed to haul and transport bulk goods. The gondola car came to the Museum in 2018 when the Bay Coast Railroad (BCR) ceased operations in Cape Charles.

Gondola Car

Flatcars have been used to transport railroad freight since the 1820s. They consist of an open wooden or steel deck mounted on wheel trucks located at each end of the car. A flatcar may have pockets at the sides of its deck where stakes can be mounted to stabilize a load, or points where ropes or cables can be secured to tie a load down. Flatcars can be used for any type of freight that is impervious to weather. From World War II until today they have been increasingly employed for intermodal or “piggyback” transportation in which a loaded truck trailer is mounted on the flatcar.This flatcar was likely acquired by the Eastern Shore Railroad (ESHR), predecessor of the Bay Coast Railroad (BCR), from Fort Eustis in Newport News, whose mission since World War II has been Army transportation training, and aviation and marine shipping. It still displays its military paint colors. Like the gondola car, it was briefly used as a “reach” car for loading freight cars onto the railroad’s barge. It was also used by ESHR and BCR at both their Little Creek and Cape Charles locations to transport rail, railroad ties, and backhoes on the railroad’s own tracks for “maintenance of way,” that is, to keep the railroad’s tracks in good repair for freight transportation.

Unfortunately, this car is no longer on site. In May 2021 Canonie Atlantic informed CCHS that in preparation for sale of the rail yard the track on which these two cars sat had to be cleared. As our siding was not long enough to accommodate them, we opted to sell them to a private railroad collector in Goshen VA where they will join his fleet of cars, which he plans to develop into a railroad museum. We have retained the photos and descriptions for general interest.Behind the boxcar is a 100-ton flatcar supported by six-wheel trucks. It was manufactured during the 1950s for the US Department of the Army. It was built by Magor Car Corporation, a builder of all types of railroad freight cars, originally located in Clifton, New Jersey. Magor produced thousands of rail cars for US military use during both World Wars, and later exported rail cars to Europe under the Marshall Plan.

Flatcar

Tank cars were invented in the 1860s to carry crude oil from Pennsylvania’s oil fields to refineries. The earliest tank cars were simply large wooden vats mounted on flat cars. During the late nineteenth century, larger tanks made of wrought iron, and later steel, were mounted horizontally on a rail car frame. They were filled through an inlet at the top of the tank and drained through an outlet at the tank’s bottom.In the twentieth century, specialized tank cars were developed to carry other types of liquid commodities. By the middle of the century, many tank cars had manholes and catwalks on top, allowing access to the interior for cleaning and repairs.During World War II (US 1941-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953), the US Army purchased many tank cars which they used for transporting fuel. Today’s tank cars may also be insulated or incorporate heating or refrigeration systems. Such specialized cars are now often owned by the companies served by railroads, rather than railroads themselves.The Eastern Shore Railroad (ESHR) used this older tank car as convenient storage in their rail yard for the fuel needed for the tug boats that conducted their barge across the bay.

Behind the Bloxom Station is a double-walled, 10,000-gallon, circa 1950s tank car made for the US Amy by the General American Transportation Corporation (now GATX) in Chicago, Illinois. When it operated on the Eastern Shore Railroad (ESHR), predecessor of the Bay Coast Railroad (BCR), it was painted Black, like most US tank cars, and numbered #9487.

Tank Car

The Richmond, Fredericksburg &amp; Potomac (RF&amp;P) Railroad had baggage cars in their passenger trains; this car, #190, was built in the 1930s for that service. The portion of the car with the smaller door was reserved for the Railway Express Agency to carry priority packages for its delivery service. The larger door opened into a baggage compartment for carrying the luggage of passengers and for shipping larger items, including machinery and animals. Early baggage cars also carried mail for the U.S. Post Office. Railroad employees would toss bags of mail out through the door and grab incoming bags as the trains passed stations for which there was no scheduled stop. The baggage car was usually placed well forward in the train because of its very heavy weight and because it held valuable shipments of anything from jewels to stocks and bonds, as well as payroll money. Art Tross, who worked for railroads for most of his life, recalls that baggage cars sometimes included occupied coffins, with a known instance of price to ship set at twice the price of a first-class ticket!Baggage Car 190 was operated at first with the Pullman Green passenger cars on the RF&amp;P passenger trains and was painted to match. Later, when the RF&amp;P changed to stainless steel passenger cars, this car retained its green livery. The car rolled on six-wheel trucks because of its weight and had provisions for lighting and for a toilet for the baggage car men who rode in it. To support water and electric power there is a large water tank and the battery box underneath the car.The RF&amp;P Railroad was chartered in 1834, to run north from Richmond via Fredericksburg to the Potomac River. It opened from Richmond to the Potomac River at Aquia Creek in 1842, with a connecting steamboat service to Washington, D.C. Eventually, through mergers with other railroads, the RF&amp;P extended rail service to Washington, D.C., including the Potomac Yards in Alexandria. The track is now the RF&amp;P Subdivision of the CSX Transportation system.The Railway Express Agency (REA) operated as a national package delivery service from 1918 to 1975. REA arranged transport and delivery via existing railroad infrastructure, much as today's delivery service companies use roads and air transport. The REA had their own trucks for road delivery from the nearest railroad station to the customer’s premises. With rail, road, and even airlines, the REA guaranteed a 5-day service almost anywhere in the country. After 1975 its efficient package delivery services passed to UPS, FedEx, and other carriers.

Located in front of the Nickel Plate caboose, is a baggage car once used by the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac (RF&amp;P) Railroad. This car was built in the 1930s to carry passenger luggage, as well as ship large items, mail, and packages for the U.S. Postal Service and the Railway Express Agency (REA).

The RF&P Baggage Car

Boxcars are enclosed cars designed to protect freight from the elements. Boxcars have been used since the 1830s to carry any kind of non-bulk cargo that will fit in their single, double, or end doors. By the 1870s American railroads had adopted interchange agreements allowing boxcars to be exchanged among railroads, which is why you will find boxcars lettered and numbered by various owners in any given rail yard. By the mid-twentieth century boxcars had to compete with containerized shipping in which goods secured in a closed container can be hauled by truck, ship, or atop railroad flat cars. Thanks to their sturdy construction, many boxcars have since been repurposed as sheds or incorporated into buildings. Today you can even find boxcars fitted out as overnight accommodations that can be rented through Airbnb.During the early 1900s, the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad, the first north-south railroad on Virginia’s portion of the Delmarva Peninsula, was formally purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Through the 1920s, thousands of freight cars, mostly boxcars, traveled the tracks south to the Cape Charles rail yard. Freight trains could be a hundred cars long. Twenty-five thousand loaded freight cars could be hauled across the Chesapeake Bay on about 1,000 barge trips in a single month.This boxcar was likely acquired by the Eastern Shore Railroad (ESHR) in the 1980s, following use by the US military. Rather than investing the funds to make it road-worthy for freight shipments, it was adapted for use by ESHR as a machine shop for needed mechanical or carpentry work. The door at the end would have been added during this renovation. The Bay Coast Railroad (BCR) later used the boxcar for secure storage of equipment.

Behind the tank car is a circa 1950s, fifty-foot, general-service boxcar, an example of a standard design widely used since the 1940s and commonly seen on American railroads through the 1980s. It has a single sliding door on each side; the door at the end of the car was added later. This boxcar was likely acquired by the Eastern Shore Railroad (ESHR) in the 1980s.

Boxcar

Our BCR 2000 was built by General Motors in 1958 as a GP9 diesel locomotive for Illinois Central Railroad. Its first name was IC 9250. GP9 models contained steam generators to provide heat for passenger cars. In 1970, when passenger rail traffic dwindled, it was converted to a GP10 model by removing the steam generator, allowing the front of the engine to be lowered and thereby improving the engineer's vision from the cab. At this time it was owned by Illinois Central Gulf Railroad and known as ICG 8250. Precision National Corporation became its next owner as PN 2000. In 1981 PN 2000 came to the Eastern Shore Railroad, was renamed ESRR 2000 and was painted dark blue. Here on the Eastern Shore the locomotive was used to transport freight between Pocomoke MD and Cape Charles. From Cape Charles harbor freight cars continued to be hauled by tug on special 'car float' barges across the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, a service that began in 1886. In 2006 the freight operations of the Eastern Shore Railroad passed to Bay Coast Railroad. The locomotive received its final name BCR 2000 and was painted BCR iconic colors of light and medium blue. It remained in operation here until rail service ended in Cape Charles and most of the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 2018.The GP10 was one of the most versatile and reliable diesel locomotives ever built, ideally suited to the purpose for which BCR used it: hauling large heavy tonnage freight. Bayshore Concrete Products was a key customer. With good track it was capable of speeds of around 80 mph. Here on the Shore it ran between 10 and 25 mph. When the Museum received the locomotive in 2018 we were responsible for moving it from the railroad yard to the museum rail siding. Thankfully Jerry Lewis, the last and long-time locomotive engineer, with his railroad contractor friend Mike Howard, were able to safely move it along deteriorated track and position it on our siding.

Directly behind the Bloxom Station is a 90-ton diesel locomotive that came to us in 2018 when the Bay Coast Railroad (BCR) ceased operations in Cape Charles. Like other railroad stock, the locomotive had been built to last. Throughout its 60-year working life, it was bought and sold by various railroad companies, each time acquiring a new name, “model designation” and paint job as well.

Cape Charles Museum and Welcome Center

Museum Building

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources