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Virginian Railway

The Virginian Railway (reporting mark VGN) was a Class I railroad located in Virginia and West Virginia in the United States. The VGN was created to transport high quality "smokeless" bituminous coal from southern West Virginia to port at Hampton Roads.

Overview

Norfolk, Virginia

1907–1959

4 ft 8+12 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

Deepwater, West Virginia

Oak Hill Junction

Mullens

Princeton

Norcross, Virginia

Merrimac

crossing Norfolk and Western

Roanoke

Altavista, crossing Southern Railway

Brookneal, crossing Norfolk and Western

Virso, crossing Southern Railway

Victoria

Alberta, crossing Seaboard Air Line Railroad

Jarratt, crossing Atlantic Coast Line Railroad

crossing Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Seaboard Air Line Railroad

Suffolk

Norfolk

Merger with Norfolk & Western[edit]

During World War I, VGN was jointly operated with its adjacent competitor, the Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W), under the USRA's wartime takeover of the Pocahontas Roads. The operating efficiencies were significant. After the war, the railroads were returned to their respective owners and competitive status. However, N&W never lost sight of VGN and its low-grade routing through Virginia.


After World War I there were many attempts by C&O, N&W, and others to acquire the Virginian Railway. 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 approved in 1959. Electric operation ended June 30, 1962.

Legacy[edit]

Two years after the merger, a book written by author and historian H. Reid, The Virginian Railway, was published. Reid stated that "There will always be a Virginian."


Today, major portions of the VGN low-gradient route are the preferred eastbound coal path for N&W's successor Norfolk Southern Railway. Other portions of VGN right-of-way in eastern Virginia now transport fresh water and are under study for future high speed passenger rail service to South Hampton Roads from Richmond and Petersburg. The former VGN property at Sewell's Point is part of the US Naval Station, Norfolk.


Although one of the smaller fallen flags of U.S. railroads, the Virginian Railway continues to have a loyal following of former employees, modelers, authors, photographers, historians and preservationists. Preservationists have saved VGN passenger stations in Suffolk and Roanoke, Virginia. The Suffolk Passenger Station, which was also used by the Seaboard railroads, has been restored and is in use as a museum. Similar plans are underway by the local chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in Roanoke for the Virginian Railway Passenger Station. The Oak Hill Railroad Depot in Oak Hill, West Virginia, the only remaining Virginian station in West Virginia, has also been restored by the local chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. In May 2003, the Virginian Railway Yard Historic District at Princeton was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.[10]


Three of VGN's locomotives and numerous cabooses and other rolling stock survive. One steam and one electric locomotive have been cosmetically restored, and are on display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke, Virginia.


In October 2002 VGN authors and enthusiasts restored the Mullens, West Virginia Caboose Museum which had been ravaged in one of West Virginia's notorious floods. The work was funded by sale of handmade models and contributions. In April 2004 children of Boonsboro Elementary School in nearby Bedford, Virginia and the local Kiwanis group in Lynchburg, Virginia teamed to raise funds and work to save the railroad's only surviving original (circa 1910) class C-1 wooden caboose. In December 2004, a fully restored and equipped VGN caboose, C-10 No. 342, built by VGN employees in the former Princeton (WV) Shops, was moved to newly laid rails at Victoria, where it is the centerpiece of a new rail heritage park, dedicated in summer 2005.


In May 2003 a Gathering of Rail Friends was held at Victoria, Virginia, home to a museum, with a park with historical interpretations of the roundhouse and turntable sites under development. The Norfolk Southern Railway sent its exhibition train to nearby Crewe for the event.


In October 2004, the Roanoke Times ran a feature story about the weekly meetings of the "Takin' Twenty with the Virginian Brethren" group of retired VGN employees, prominently displaying the model of a modern GE locomotive in Virginian Railway livery, which they hope the railroad will use as a basis for a special painting of current-day Norfolk Southern Railway locomotive to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1907 founding of their favorite railroad, the Virginian Railway.


In April 2005, the Virginian Railway Coalfield Seminar was held for three days at Twin Falls State Park, near Mullens, West Virginia. Railfriends from many parts of the United States toured coal mining and railroad facilities for three days on several buses, and participated in presentations and group seminars with a Congressman, local officials, several noted authors and historians. The delegation of retirees based in Roanoke also attended.


In early 2012, Norfolk Southern announced a program to paint selected units of new GE ES44AC and EMD SD70ACe orders into heritage paint schemes for predecessor roads. Virginian Railway was chosen among 19 other former railroads represented in the program. NS SD70ACe 1069 was painted to match the original yellow and black paint scheme worn by VGN's Fairbanks-Morse diesels. As of June 2023, the engine is in Altoona, PA being repainted with fresh paint.


In 2015, a portion of the former Virginian in the state of West Virginia, was mothballed by Norfolk Southern due to a decline in coal shipments.[11] In May 2016, WATCO Companies entered an agreement with Norfolk Southern to lease most of the remaining active line in West Virginia between Maben and Deepwater and operate it under the Kanawha River Railroad (KNWA) to load trains from Norfolk Southern at three mines on their system. The section between Maben and Mullens remains under Norfolk Southern control, with trackage rights for KNWA trains to interchange with NS at Elmore Yard.[12]

- restored VGN freight station

Oak Hill, West Virginia

- VGN Caboose 307 Museum

Mullens, West Virginia

- Replica Station and Museum

Princeton, West Virginia

- Virginia Museum of Transportation – 2 VGN locomotives, misc. rolling stock, and restored VGN freight station (from Ellett)

Roanoke, Virginia

- Preservation of VGN Passenger Station and Future Museum

Roanoke, Virginia

- Fully restored and equipped VGN caboose 342 and Museum

Victoria, Virginia

- restored Seaboard and VGN combination station, Museum and model train layout of Suffolk area circa 1940

Suffolk, Virginia

- the Virginian Railway's eastern terminus, the Norfolk and Western's headquarters, demolished, 1963

Norfolk Terminal Station

Railroad electrification in the United States

Barger, Ralph L. (1983) Corporate History of Coal & Coke Railway Co., Charleston, Clendennin & Sutton R.R., Roaring Creek & Belington R.R. Co., as of Date of Valuation, June 30, 1918. : Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Historical Society.

Baltimore, MD

Cartlidge, Oscar (1936) Fifty Years of Coal Mining : Rose City Press.

Charleston, WV

Conley, Phil (1960) History of the Coal Industry of West Virginia Charleston, WV: Educational Foundation.

Conley, Phil (1923) Life in a West Virginia Coal Field Charleston, WV: American Constitutional Association.

Corbin, David Alan (1981) Life, Work and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922 : University of Illinois Press.

Chicago, Illinois

Corbin, David Alan, editor (1990) The West Virginia Mine Wars: An Anthology Charleston, WV: Appalachian Editions.

Craigo, Robert W., editor (1977) The New River Company: Mining Coal and Making History, 1906–1976 : New River Company.

Mount Hope, WV

Dix, Keith (1977) Work Relations in the Coal Industry: The Hand Loading Era, 1880–1930 : West Virginia University Institute for Labor Studies.

Morgantown, WV

Dixon, Thomas W Jr., (1994) Appalachian Coal Mines & Railroads. Lynchburg, Virginia: TLC Publishing Inc.  1-883089-08-5

ISBN

Frazier, Claude Albee (1992) Miners and Medicine: West Virginia Memories : University of Oklahoma Press.

Norman, OK

Huddleston, Eugene L, PhD (2002) Appalachian Conquest, : TLC Publishing Inc. ISBN 1-883089-79-4

Lynchburg, Virginia

Lambie, Joseph T. (1954) From Mine to Market: The History of Coal Transportation on the Norfolk and Western Railway New York:

New York University Press

Lane, Winthrop David (1921) Civil War in West Virginia: A Story of the Industrial Conflict in the Coal Mines New York, NY: B. W. Huebsch, Inc.

Lewis, Lloyd D. (1992) The Virginian Era. Lynchburg, Virginia: TLC Publishing Inc.

Lewis, Lloyd D. (1994) Norfolk & Western and Virginian Railways in Color by H. Reid. Lynchburg, Virginia: TLC Publishing Inc.  1-883089-09-3

ISBN

MacCorkle, William (1928) The Recollections of Fifty Years New York City: Publishing

G. P. Putnam's Sons

Middleton, William D. (1974) When The Steam Railroads Electrified (1st ed.). : Kalmbach Publishing Co. ISBN 0-89024-028-0

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Reid, H. (1961). The Virginian Railway (1st ed.). Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Reisweber, Kurt (1995) Virginian Rails 1953–1993 (1st ed.) Old Line Graphics.  1-879314-11-8

ISBN

Sullivan, Ken, editor (1991) The Goldenseal Book of the West Virginia Mine Wars: Articles Reprinted from Goldenseal Magazine, 1977–1991. Charleston: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co.

Striplin, E. F. Pat. (1981) The Norfolk & Western : a history Roanoke, Va. : Norfolk and Western Railway Co.  0-9633254-6-9

ISBN

Tams, W. P. (1963) The Smokeless Coal Fields of West Virginia Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Library.

Thoenen, Eugene D. (1964) History of the Oil and Gas Industry in West Virginia Charleston, WV:

Traser, Donald R. (1998) Virginia Railway Depots. Old Dominion Chapter, National Railway Historical Society.  0-9669906-0-9

ISBN

various contributors (1968). Who Was Who in America Volume I (7th ed.). : Marquis Who's Who

New Providence, New Jersey

Wiley, Aubrey and Wallace, Conley (1985). The Virginian Railway Handbook. Lynchburg, Virginia: W-W Publications.