Pennsylvania Avenue Line (Washington, D.C.) to take up such portions of their tracks as may come in way of the improvement of the Capitol Grounds". This improvement gave the Capitol Grounds their present shape, bounded by First Street West and East and B Street North and South, and the Pennsylvania Avenue Line was moved to First Street West and B Street South. The B&O station branch was moved to First Avenue West and C Street North, ending at New Jersey Avenue; this had been the route of the B&O before its tracks (actually those of the Alexandria and Washington Railroad) were ripped up in 1872.
Franklin B. Gowen president, Charles E. Smith, so that when Smith took a needed ocean voyage for his health in mid-1869, 33-year-old Gowen was put in charge upon Smith's recommendation to the Board of Managers. When Smith was unable to return for the next board election in January 1870, Gowen was elected president in his own right, a position he would occupy for more than a decade. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was a regional carrier only, not a trunk line with its own through connections to Pittsburgh, Chicago and beyond, like the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) or the Erie railroads.