A Day of Operation on the USMRR Aquia Line - 2 March 1863

A few years ago I went to the National Archives and copied many documents relating to the USMRR. I have not had time to fully digest the material. Tonight I decided to do a bit of analysis of operations on the Aquia Line. I picked March 2, 1863 as I have multiple records for that day. It looks like a fairly typical day compared to other days.

The following is a transcribed version of the Log of Arrival and Departure of Trains at Falmouth Station, March 2, 1863. The handwriting on this log is very difficult to read and doesn't follow a strict format.


W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 1 Engine Lion arrived at 7:20 A.M.
      Ex (tra)  "   1    "       Osceola  "     "  7:35   "   Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 2  Engine Lion left at      7:50 A.M.
      Ex (tra)  "    2    "        Osceola  "     "  8:00   "   Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 3  Engine Leach arrived at 10:15 A.M.
         "          "   4    "        Leach  Left      "  10:45   "  Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 5  Engine Fury arrived at      1:30 P.M.
        "          "    6     "       Fury  Left      "      1:45    "  Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 7  Engine Leach arrived at      4:35 P.M.
       Ex.          "  7     "       Lion   arrived  "       4:40    "
     Train     No. 8  Engine Leach left  at            4:45 P.M.
       Ex.          "  8     "       Lion   left   "            4:50    "  Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
     Train     No. 9  Engine Fury arrived at      7:45 P.M.
        "            "  9       "        ''     arrived  "       7:55    "      Cheney
W.W.W. S.Y.
      Engine Leach arrived at 11PM
      Engine Leach  Left      "  11:15PM    Cheney

Note the W.W.W. stands for William Wierman Wright, Superintendent of the Aquia Line. The S.Y. may mean Superintendent.

This next document is the Log of Cars Received at and Forwarded from Falmouth, March 2, 1863

No	Time	Engine	Conductor	No of Cars	Contents	Consignee
	Cars Received At Falmouth Mar 2, 1863
1	7:20	Lion	Perine	1191	Passengers	Agent
"	“	“	"	1242, 1183	Mil Goods	Pierce
"	"	"	"	1258, 1094, 1252, 31, 1171, 1114, 133, 1147, 1141, 1234, 1136, 1075	Forage	Pierce
1 Extra	7:35	Osceola	Doyle	146, 131, 169, 1159, 1234, 1124, 122, 1162, 1169, 1133, 1244, 119	Forage	Pierce	Note car 1234 is duplicated. Could be a typo
3	10:15	Leach	Smith	1100, 1067, 160,147, 1091, 1053,	Coms. Stores	Winchester
"	"	"	“	1156	Passengers	Agent
5	1:30	Fury	Clinton	1081, 162,	Mil Goods	Pierce
"	“	"	“	1135, 1243	Passengers	Agent
7	4:35	Leach	Smith	1036, 1165	Coms Stores	Winchester
"	"	"	"	13, 102	Stores	Pierce
"	"	"	"	231	Ord Stores	Pierce
7 Extra	4:40	Lion	Perine	1256, 1104, 1253,1132, 1139, 1074, 1077	Forage	Pierce
9	7:45	Fury	Clinton	1100, 101, 1072, 1110	Forage	Pierce
Extra	11:00	Leach	Smith	169, 1267, 1188, 1232, 1239, 1159	Forage	Pierce
	Cars Forwarded from Falmouth March 2, 1863					Destination
2	7:50	Lion	Perine	186, 1135, 1257, 4146, 1110,	troops	Aquia
2 Extra	8:00	Osceola	Doyle	1243, 1044, 1148, 1189,	Empty	Aquia
"	"	"	"	124	QM Stores	12th U.S. Inf, Stonemans
4	1045	Leach	Smith	146, 181, 169, 1239, 119, 1124, 1244, 1133, 1169, 1162, 122, 1183, 1191, 1234, 1141 , 1147, 133, 1114, 1288, 1171	Empty	Aquia
"	"	"	"	1250, 31, 1094, 1136, 1095 Mail	Mail and Passengers	W Boat
6	1:45	Fury	Clinton	1243, 1053, 1067, 1011,1091, 147, 160, 1156	Empty	Aquia
8	4:45	Leach	Smith	1081, 162, 1135, 1243	Empty	Aquia
8 Extra	4:50	Lion	Perine	Nil	Empty	Aquia
10	7:55	Fury	Clinton	1104, 1253, 1132, 1077, 1074, 1256, 1139, 13, 102, 231, 1036, 1165, 1136, 1094	Empty	Aquia
Extra	11;15	Leach	Smith	Nil	Empty	Aquia

There are couple things to note by analyzing these data.

A total of 60 cars arrived at Falmouth and 61 cars left on March 2. Most cars that left went to Aquia empty, but one was sent to Stonemans. (Note  three cars were sent to other stops from Falmouth on March 3rd. Look at the original document to verify that, it is not in the transcribed table.)  Note that "W Boat" is the daily steamboat to Washington, DC. It leaves from the wharf.

The longest train was 4 with 25 cars, next was 1 with 15 cars. Two engines ran light back to Aquia.

Note that some cars stayed at Falmouth overnight, while others got delivered in the morning and departed that same day.  For example 1141 and 1147 arrived on Train 1 with forage and departed empty on train  4 three hours later. Similarly, car 1191 brought passengers, but left empty on 4. Other cars like 1110 and 101 came in on 9 but stayed the night. Car 1110 left Falmouth on Train 2 and returned at 7:45PM on Train 9.

The make up of the incoming and outgoing trains is not the same. This implies that a fair amount of switching was going on at Falmouth.  Conductor Smith was busy as he ran three trains that day.

No trains met trains coming in the opposite direction during this day. This matches the schedule I have from 1864, where there are no scheduled meets. The extras ran on the time of their scheduled train.

Overall it's not too complex an operation, but there is a lot more switching going on than I expected. That should make my crews happy. I don't have a train register for all stations, so I can not create a "as-run" string diagram.  I also do not have copies of any of the train orders for 2 March. But I suspect there are some at the NARA. I need to recheck those. There were so many train orders there, that I got tired of copying them on the day I visited.

Pierce is shown as a consignee on some of the cars. The NOAA Map shows a place called "Capt Pierce" just south of Falmouth. I suspect this was the HQ for Capt Pierce, a Quartermaster officer, but I am not sure.

I have previously posted the roster of USMRR cars at this link.  However, it's pretty easy to tell what number is what kind of car. The flat cars are numbered with 1 to 3 digits. The box cars start at 1000 and go up. There are 30 stock cars in the 2 and 3 digit range, interspersed among the fact car numbers. Most of the cars are 28 ft long with 10 ton capacity. I do not have any further information differentiating the types of cars, so I have to rely on photographic evidence to see how many arched, peaked, combination, etc. cars there were.   

Here are copies of the original documents in case you want to check my transcription. Some of this handwriting is hard to read.