Newington Railroad Station (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact site where the station once stood. No visible remains exist. The railroad station's original name was Accotink Station, and wasn't renamed Newington Station until 1950.


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Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

Newington Railroad Station:
The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company was chartered in 1834, and the line was finished as far as Fredericksburg by 1837. From this point, passengers bound for Washington took a coach to Aquia Creek and then took a steamboat up the river. The line extended to join the Alexandria and Washington Railroad after the Civil War, in 1872, at which time it was known as the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad Company. At this time were built the passenger station, then called "Long Branch" now remodeled as a two-story residence, and the freight office, both on Cinder Bed Road (the original right-of-way). In 1903, the right-of-way was realigned to its present (1971) location and a new station of vertical board and batten design was built and called "Newington" after the nearby eighteenth century plantation of Reverend Charles Green. In the same year, Pearson's Store was built. This building now also houses the Newington Post Office.

The main section of the building measures 24 1/2 feet wide by 70 feet long. According to residents of the area, there were originally two waiting rooms: the one on the north end for colored passengers; the one of the south end for white. There is corner block molding around doors and windows, narrow vertical tongue-in-groove wall paneling and wooden benches.

Newington Station was important to the transportation of troops to and from Camp Humphreys during World War I, and to and from the same facility, renamed Fort Belvoir, during World War II. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Company was authorized to close the agency station on June 1, 1971, by order of the State Corporation Commission.


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Here follows the inscription written on a nearby roadside historical marker:

Newington was the name given to the second Truro Parish Glebe House completed in 1760 after it became the private residence of Richard and Sarah McCarty Chichester after 1767. The William Nevitt family acquired the house and 1000 acre tract in 1828 and occupied the house until it burned in 1875. In April 1872, the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad, originally built on Cinder Bed Road, opened the Long Branch Station on Nevitt property. By 1918 the station, renamed Accotink, was linked by a spur to Camp Humphreys, later renamed Fort Belvoir, to transport troops during World War I. In 1971 the station, last known as Newington, was closed.

Marker Erected 2005 by The Fairfax County History Commission


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Regarding Newington:
Until the mid-1980s the Newington Post Office (Zip Code 22122) was in an old country store on the east side of the RF&P railroad tracks and Newington Road at the one-lane underpass, up at track level.

Pearson's Store and Post Office:
Harry Pearson was the owner of Pearson's Store. The Pearson family lived down the road across from Cinder Bed Road, including Samuel T. Pearson.

Newington Road One-Lane Underpass:
It's still there today, on the other section of Newington Road, under the CSX tracks from Washington to Richmond. Yield signs at both ends control traffic flow.


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Here follows a history of Newington as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

What's in a Name?
Learn about the origin of our school's name in this video produced for Fairfax County Public Schools’ cable television channel Red Apple 21:

Newington Forest Elementary School, named for the surrounding Newington Forest residential neighborhood, opened in 1983. The name Newington is derived from the name of a dwelling, built in the mid-1700s, that once stood approximately three-and-a-half miles east of the school. In the 1600s, as the Virginia colony grew and settlers increased the population of the “frontier,” the General Assembly formed new counties and parishes to oversee the functions of local government. Counties were administrative areas governed by the courts in which justices, sheriffs, and constables maintained law and order. Within the boundaries of each county could be found one or more parishes. A parish was a region in which the Anglican Church and its vestry – a group of wealthy landholders – oversaw religious activities as well as some civil functions such as the care of orphans and the poor. Each parish had one or more areas known as a “glebe.” A glebe was a tract of land set aside for the support of the parish’s minister. In the spring of 1767, the vestry of Fairfax County’s Truro Parish offered for sale at auction one of its tracts of glebe land, including the dwelling house on the property. The glebe was purchased by Daniel McCarty, and was later given by him to his daughter Sarah and her husband Richard Chichester. Historians believe that it was the Chichester's who gave the dwelling on the former glebe tract the name Newington. In 1828, Newington was purchased from the Chichester’s heirs by William Nevitt. Located in the vicinity of the modern intersection of Accotink Road and Newington Road, the manor house remained in the Nevitt family until it was destroyed by fire in 1875. The name Newington likely would have been forgotten had it not been for the establishment of a post office by that name in 1888. The first Newington Post Office was located approximately three quarters of a mile west of the ruins. In the early 20th century, after the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac railroad tracks had been realigned, the Newington Post Office was moved to Pearson’s Store, which was then located on the east side of the railroad tracks south of the Newington Road underpass. Accotink Station, a train station within walking distance of Pearson’s Store, was renamed Newington Station in the 1950s. The station and post office were both demolished later in the 20th century, but the name Newington endures in the names of roads, neighborhoods, a new post office, and Newington Forest Elementary School.


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Here follows an excerpt from Nathaniel Lee's book, "The Iron Road of Franconia" that talks about the railroad:

The other major spur that connected to the Washington Southern Railway was the Fort Belvoir Military Railroad, so named after the estate established on the property in 1740. The elegant brick mansion called “Belvoir” belonged to William Fairfax. He was the area tax collector of his day and a cousin to Lord Thomas Fairfax, from whom Fairfax County takes its name. The Belvoir mansion stood watch over the Potomac River for 43 years before a fire gutted it in 1783. During the War of 1812, American forces dug in on the slopes below the house during the four-day Naval Battle of the White House in 1914. What was left of the Belvoir mansion was destroyed by British cannon fire during the battle. The home foundations and adjacent family cemetery are on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1917, the United States declared war against Germany and entered the fighting in the First World War. The U.S. Army purchased property on the Belvoir peninsula south of the town of Accotink in order to train and prepare engineers for combat in Europe. Unfortunately, getting to the property was another matter entirely. In the closing months of 1917, Virginians were laboring through the harshest winter seen in decades.

Never intended to stand up to the snow or heavy hauling, the muddy farm roads in the vicinity were practically impassable. It took six strong horses to pull an empty wagon down the King’s Highway, and shipping was not an option either, as the Potomac River had frozen over. To assist in the mobilization efforts of troops and supplies, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the United States Railroad Administration to take over the operation of most of the country’s railroads, including the Washington Southern Railway. The construction of a dedicated military railroad was one of the first priorities.

A five-mile-long railroad spur was to be constructed between the main line of the Washington Southern Railway at Accotink Station and the site of Camp Humphreys (present-day Fort Belvoir), which was then under construction. On the morning of January 29, 1918, the Second Battalion of the 304th Engineers departed their headquarters at Camp Meade, Maryland, and arrived by train at Accotink Station three hours later, greeted by a blizzard. In true Army fashion, the men piled out of the train cars for their first ever backpack hike. Five miles of rugged forested country lay before them, and after trudging for hours through six inches of snow, they came to Camp Humphreys just as it began to darken. The barracks, when they reached them, were dirty and cold with just a folding canvas bunk to greet them.

The next day the raging blizzard continued as the men walked five miles with only a sandwich for their lunch to where their campsite was to be. There they worked in the snow all day, ate their cold lunch out in the open and brushed the snowflakes from their sandwiches as they ate. For a week thereafter, the men worked every day constructing their new camp. Mrs. George S. Kernan of the Mount Air plantation house played the kind host to the battalion on her land, and they named their encampment “Camp Merry Widow” in honor of her, while others, less grateful, give it the more obvious nickname of “Camp Mud.”

The Second Battalion began construction of the railroad from Accotink Station, while another group of engineers started to work from Camp Humphreys. Leaving the main railroad line, the proposed railroad right-of-way entered heavily wooded ground, crossed several valleys, plowed through a slight rise and passed their campsite. It then skirted the village of Accotink and crossed several more valleys and streams until it arrived at Camp Humphreys.

The work required various jobs such as cutting timber, flattening hills, filling valleys and building four trestle bridges. The largest of these bridges was some six hundred feet long. The bridge would have a six-degree turn, a two percent grade, and required especially accurate workmanship. The men measured, cut and placed the timbers for the bridge. They cut down timbers for the bridge from the surrounding forest and hauled them from where they grew. Toward the end of the work, when extra speed was called for, they installed a series of electric lights around the bridge. Work continued both day and night.

The battalion managed to complete this project and build passable roads through the area in less than seventy-five days. The battalion left Accotink and returned to their headquarters at Camp Meade, Maryland on April 14, 1918. These same men would be building bridges under German fire in France just a few months later. Victory over Germany would come in November of that year.

When the Fort Belvoir Military Railroad was finished, the power to pull the numerous boxcars, flatcars, coaches and Pullmans came from large steam engines supposedly used in building the Panama Canal. Two engines stayed busy during the First World War. When peace came, one became a stand-by engine. These locomotives ran from 1918 until about 1941 when diesels replaced them. Different engineering schools, including the Light Railway School, took advantage of the railroad as an instructional tool. There were units often learning the hands-on skills needed in building, maintaining and operating a railroad.

The Washington Southern Railway would remain under federal control for a total of 26 months. On February 29, 1920, by proclamation from the President of the United States, operational control of the railway returned to the RF&P Railroad, who officially absorbed the Washington Southern Railway into their own system and the Washington Southern name relegated to the history books.

Over the years, Camp Andrew A. Humphreys continued to grow in size. Many of the area Quaker families lost their land to the fort’s continued expansion and moved away. The name changed in 1935 to Fort Belvoir after President Franklin Roosevelt visited nearby Gunston Hall and learned of the historical associations with the Army property. The military railroad operated until 1997, a span of 79 years. The Base Realignment and Closure agreement, as well as the widening of Richmond Highway, meant the tracks and bridges were finally destroyed to bring the military and the surrounding community into the twenty-first century.