Rail and Navigation Lines

If readers have not guessed it by now I am a local news junkie. Maybe I tune out things I can not control or perhaps even understand like the war in Iraq, and social issues like evolution. After scanning the front page of The Washington Post on Sundays, I routinely turn to the Loudoun Section and look for Eugene Scheel’s occasional stories about the Piedmont. They almost always bring back a memory that I have as a young boy growing up in Loudoun County. Today’s article, At the End of the Line, An Opportunity Lost, reminded me of the train that brought my trunk home from summer camp in Maine. Leesburg was a Railway Express terminal, the FedEx of the early part of the last century. The story also triggered thoughts about the number one issue in Loudoun County today – transportation.

I called my friend and Town Council member Ken Reid, who is a transportation guru, to get his reaction to the article. Ken reminded me of the proposed Metro Purple Line from Bethesda, through Chevy Chase Lake, Silver Spring, and New Carrollton continuing on to complete a full circle of Washington like the Beltway. The proposed Purple Line right-of-way in Montgomery County is another abandoned heavy rail line. Trains on this line moved coal and freight to Georgetown. Ken said that politics, not the cost of the right-of-way, doomed the line. Nevertheless every few years the idea resurfaces. This triggered another memory bell. Part of the political pressure stemmed from the Columbia County Club whose members include powerful Washington area businessmen and professionals.

Columbia Club is located just north of East-West Highway and about a mile south of the Beltway. The proposed Purple Line railway right-of-way like the W&OD trail is also a walking and bike trail. This railroad right-of-way runs through the Columbia Club golf course between the 14th and 15th greens. Golfers today use two tunnels to walk or drive golf carts under the trail. On the other side of the trail from the golf course is historic Hayes Manor. (Note it is Hayes, not Haynes, but there is a family connection.) My great uncle George T. Dunlop, Jr. bought Hayes Manor in the 1902 and lived there until he died in the 1950s. My cousin, close friend, and mentor Langhorne Bond is George Dunlop’s grandson. Langhorne’s father lived in China for 22 years. He worked for Pan American World Airways trying to save China National Aviation Corporation from the clutches of the Japanese. CNAC was a fledging airline jointly own by the Chinese government and Pan Am. As war loomed he sent Langhorne and his brother to Chevy Chase to live at Hayes Manor. After George Dunlop died, Hayes was sold to Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post’s granddaughter, Ellen McNeil Charles. In the 1990’s Hayes manor’s property was divided. The Manor house and a small amount of land were purchased by Columbia Club, and the remaining land by The Howard Hughes Medical Institute as their main campus. This is the same medical research organization that recently opened in Loudoun County at Janella Farm on Rt. 7.

Langhorne followed his father’s aviation interest and became Administrator of the FAA in the 1970’s. Last October Prince Philip of England indoctrinated him as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation honoring Langhorne’s work to save LORAN and make it a backup for GPS navigation. The Greenwich meridian is the line where time and navigation begins.

Perhaps the history of these different lines will help us solve Loudoun’s transportation problems, and then again maybe not. Hopefully at least the history is entertaining.