Basic City Rail Car Works (historical) (Waynesboro, Virginia)

USA / Virginia / Waynesboro / Waynesboro, Virginia
 place with historical importance, factory building
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Now housing a construction-related enterprise, this old factory was the Basic City Rail Car works.

Near the active B&O railway to the south, in the woods, a curving wooden trestle bridge topped with rusting spur line tracks still stands --despite a recent large fire set by partiers or vagrants who encamp in those woods. Further along, tracks run through the forest with trees grown between the rails. Approaching the old brick-and-stone-built factory building, some rail shows in the grass and the grass-cover is thinner where the rocky ballast is just under the surface. The rail car factory was among industries started in the extinct boomtown of Basic City, Virginia (see wikipedia link) a bit before the depression of 1893 led most Basic businesses to close. Speculators hoped Basic City would be a national industrial giant like Pittsburgh thanks to the important railroad junction (The Iron Cross) a bit east of here. Basic City went bust and remains an economically distressed area in Waynesboro --into which Basic City was dissolved in 1923.
The old rails are no longer in active use, of course, but they are present above ground all along the slender, curving, sloped railway embankment.
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   38°4'27"N   78°52'53"W
This article was last modified 8 years ago