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The Foxfields steeplechase events are in April (tel. 434-293-9501), and the Monticello Wine and Jazz Fest in early October offers sampling of a dozen Charlottesville-area wineries (tel. 434-296-4188).

The Fridays After 5 free outdoor concert series runs late April to early October at Charlottesville’s Downtown Amphitheater (www.Fridays­After5.com). The Virginia Film Festival the last week in October (tel. 434-982-5277).

Ashland

Around Town

A two-year-old boy repeats the word “train” in an excited voice, pointing out to his mom an Amtrak rumbling through town. His sister looks more interested in her double-scoop ice cream cone from the Whistle-Stop Ice Cream Parlor. A block away, a sidewalk café is filled with lunch-goers. A bicyclist, laden down with saddlebags, pedals slowly by on his cross-country route.

Forty trains a day pass through Ashland, a small town a dozen miles north of Virginia’s capital city of Richmond. And we do mean through town. The east coast’s main train route from Maine to Florida splits the main street – appropriately called Railroad Avenue – down the middle. Only eight stop daily, mostly Amtrak passenger service. But passengers still embark from the 1923 train station, which also houses the Ashland Visitor Center. Remarkably preserved considering the continuous use it’s had, the station has two original benches (a third is on display at the Smithsonian), and separate waiting rooms and window tickets, a somber reminder of the days of segregation.

The town exists here because of the railroad. In 1836 the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) laid tracks north from Richmond, and began to develop the land along the right-of-way. In the 1850s, minerals springs were discovered where Randolph-Macon College now sits, and a resort retreat sprang up called Slash Cottage. The railroad encouraged people to buy building lots and relocate to the new town, named Ashland in 1855 after the Kentucky estate of Henry Clay, who was born in Hanover County.

Most of the finest houses in town face the tracks, and business names spin off easily from the railroad theme: Whistle-stop Ice Cream, the ­Caboose Wine Shop, the Ironhorse restaurant. All the buildings on the block burned to the ground in 1893, although the fire was fought valiantly by a bucket brigade of residents and a fire engine sent on a flatbed railroad car. The buildings standing today were built of fire-resistant brick between 1894 and 1913. A century after the fire, in 1993, another brigade of residents helped move the library’s collection of 30,000 books across the tracks to the new library.

Many of the train passengers are students at Randolph-Macon College, which is across the street from the station. The co-ed liberal arts college moved here from Boydton, Virginia in 1868. Founded in 1830, it’s the oldest Methodist college in the country.

Others passing through town are on bicycles. The Transcontinental Bicycle Route goes right down Railroad Avenue on its way from Yorktown, Virginia, to Oregon. While we were there, a biker stopped in for directions. A little saddle-weary, he’d already been to the see the Yorktown Battlefield, and was now heading back west across the country.

Attractions

Downtown on Railroad Avenue, Cross Brothers Grocery Store has been open since 1912. They still provide home delivery and charge accounts. In the back of the store are old photographs and store memorabilia. It’s open Monday-Saturday, 8 am-6 pm; till 7 pm on Friday. (tel. 804-798-8311)

Hanover County Black Heritage Museum houses the history of local African-Americans. Open Monday, Wednesday and Friday by appointment. Free. (204 Virginia Street, tel. 804-798-5774)

North Anna Battlefield Park has interpretive walking trails and preserves Confederate earthworks which Grant attacked in May, 1864. Located three miles west of Route 1 on Route 684, (tel. 804-730-6165)

Six miles north of Ashland, Paramount’s Kings Dominion is 400 acres of fun, fun, fun. Eight