Rail Barge
A railroad car float or rail barge is a specialised form of Lighter (barge), lighter with railway tracks mounted on its deck used to move rolling stock across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise go. An unpowered barge, it is towed by a tugboat or pushed by a towboat. This is distinguished from a train ferry, which is self-powered. Historical operations U.S. East Coast During the American Civil War, Civil War, Union general Herman Haupt, a civil engineer, used huge barges fitted with tracks to enable military trains to cross the Rappahannock River in support of the Army of the Potomac. Beginning in the 1830s, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) operated Capital Subdivision#Alexandria Division, a car float across the Potomac River, just south of Washington, D.C., between Shepherds Landing on the east shore, and Alexandria, Virginia on the west. The ferry operation ended in 1906. The B&O operated a car float across the Baltimore Inner Harbor until th ...
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