Norfolk and Western Railway
Norfolk and Western Railway
Norfolk and Western Railway (NW), a class 1 US railroad, was formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It had headquarters and shops at Roanoke, Virginia for most of its' 150 year existence. NW had grown to a system serving 14 states and a province of Canada on more than 7,000 miles of road when it was combined with the Southern Railway to become the current Norfolk Southern Corporation in 1982. An earlier Norfolk Southern Railroad, which itself had merged in Southern Railway in 1974, was the namesake for the 1982 combination, and the new Norfolk Southernheadquarters were established in Norfolk, Virginia.
The history of the Norfolk and Western Railway began with the City Point Railroad, a nine-mile line from City Point (now the independent City of Hopewell, Virginia) to Petersburg, Virginia. This short-line played a crucial role in the US Civil War during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-1865. After the War, it became part of the Southside Railroad. William Mahone, a Virginia Military Institute engineering graduate, built the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad and eventually became its president in the pre-Civil War era. Mahone's innovative roadbed through the Great Dismal Swamp near Norfolk, Virginia, employs a log foundation laid at right angles beneath the surface of the swamp. Still in use today, it withstands immense tonnages of coal traffic - today's freight on a brilliantly engineered 19th century track.
Of small stature, the dynamic Mahone became a Major General in the Confederate Army and was widely regarded as the hero of the Battle of the Crater during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864-1865. After the war, Mahone was the driving force in the linkage of N&P, Southside Railroad and the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad to form the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a new line extending from Norfolk to Bristol, Virginia in 1870. After several years of operating under receiverships, Mahone's role as a railroad builder ended in 1881.
At the 1881 foreclosure auction, the AM&O was purchased by E.W. Clark and Co., a private banking firm in Philadelphia which controlled the Shenandoah Valley Railroad then under construction. The AM&O was renamed Norfolk and Western Railroad.
Frederick J. Kimball, a civil engineer and partner in the Clark firm, headed the new line and consolidated it with the Shenandoah Valley Railroad. For the junction for the Shenandoah and the Norfolk & Western, Kimball and his board of directors selected a small Virginia village called Big Lick, on the Roanoke River. The small town was ater renamed Roanoke, Virginia.
It was at the Norfolk & Western's Roanoke Shops, which employed thousands of craftsmen, where decades later the famed classes A, J and Y6 locomotives would be designed, built and maintained, made the company known industrywide for its excellence in steam power. Several of these are now on display at the [Virginia Museum of Transportation] in Roanoke, VA.
Kimball, whose interest in geology was responsible for the opening of the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and West Virginia, pushed NW lines through the wilds of West Virginia, north to Columbus, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio, and south to Durham, North Carolina and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This gave the railroad the route structure it was to use for more than 60 years.
In 1885, several small mining companies representing about 400,000 acres of coal reserves grouped together to form the coalfields' largest landowner, the Philadelphia-based Flat-Top Coal Land Association. Norfolk and Western Railway bought the Association and reorganized it as the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Co., which it later renamed Pocahontas Land Corp, now a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern.
As the availability and fame of high-quality Pocahontas coal increased, economic forces took over. Coal operators and their employees settled dozens of towns in southern West Virginia, and in the next few years, as coal demand swelled, some of them amassed fortunes. The countryside was soon sprinkled with tipples, coke ovens, houses for workers, company stores and churches. In the four decades before the Crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression, these coal towns flourished. One example was the small community of Bramwell, W.Va., which in its heyday boasted the highest per capita concentration of millionaires in the country.
The opening of the coalfields made NW prosperous and Pocahontas coal world-famous. Transported by the NW and neighboring Virginian Railway (VGN), it fueled half the world's navies and today stokes steel mills and power plants all over the globe.
Norfolk and Western operated profitably through World War I and World War II and paid regular dividends throughout the Depression. During World War I, the NW was jointly operated with its adjacent competitor, the Virginian Railway (VGN), under the USRA's wartime takeover of the Pocahontas Roads. The operating efficiencies were significant, and after the war, when the railroads were returned to their respective owners and competitive status, the NW never lost sight of the VGN and its low-grade routing through Virginia. However, the US Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) turned down attempts at combining the roads until the late 1950s, when a proposed Norfolk & Western Railway and Virginian Railway merger was finally approved.
The Virginian Railway (VGN) was built by Henry Huttleston Rogers. He was a principal of Standard Oil. Early in the 20th century, he built his "Mountains to Sea" railroad from the coal fields of southern West Virginia to port near Norfolk at Sewall's Point, Virginia in the harbor of Hampton Roads. Financed almost entirely from his own resources, the VGN is widely considered to be his final life's achievement. Built following Rogers' policy of investing in the best route and equipment on initial selection and purchase to save operating expenses, the VGN enjoyed a more modern pathway built to the highest standards, and provided major competition to its larger neighboring railroads. Mark Twain spoke at the dedication of the new railroad only 6 weeks before Rogers died in 1909 just as his railroad was completed. Shortly after it opened, the new Virginian Railway was toured by Dr. Booker T. Washington, whose work on behalf of Negro education causes Rogers had been funding.
The 600-mile Virginian Railway followed the Rogers philosophy throughout its profitable history, and operated some of the largest and most powerful steam, electric, and diesel locomotives. It competed with both the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and Norfolk and Western for coal traffic. The VGN shared electrical resources with the Norfolk and Western between 1925 and 1950, when the latter discontinued its' electrified section through the great Flat Top mountain. The larger electrification of the Virginian Railway was also discontinued under Norfolk & Western management in 1962, following the merger.
When the Virginian Railway was finally merged into Norfolk & Western in 1959, it is widely believed that the ICC approval began a merger movement and a modernization of the entire US railroad industry. In 1964, the former Wabash; Nickel Plate; Pittsburgh & West Virginia; and Akron, Canton & Youngstown railways were brought into the system in one of the most complex mergers of the era. This consolidation, enhanced by the addition of a more direct route to Chicago, Illinois in 1976, positioned Norfolk & Western as an important Midwestern railroad, providing direct single-line service between the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Great Lakes and Mississippi River on the other.
In the late 1960s, Norfolk & Western also acquired Dereco, a combination of the Delaware and Hudson, Erie Lackawanna, Reading, and New Jersey Central. However, this subsidiary consisting of troubled northeastern US railroads was not merged into the Norfolk & Western. Most of Dereco later became part of Conrail. Some of those portions later also became part of [Norfolk Southern]] when in it acquired the major portion of Conrail in 1999. NW was also a major investor in Piedmont Airlines.
In the early 1980s, the profitable Norfolk & Western combine forces with Southern Railway, another profitable company, to form today’s' Norfolk Southern and compete more effectively with CSX Transportation, itself a combination of smaller railroads in the eastern half of the United States.
Today, much of the former Norfolk and Western Railway is a vital portion of Norfolk Southern Corporation.