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Along
the Rails:
Train
Travel in Virginia
Virginians
never had their own 20th Century Limited – the New
York Central’s luxury train that rolled out a red
carpet for its Chicago-bound passengers. But, even
today, everything from potatoes for French fries at
McDonald’s to computers rides the rails in the Old
Dominion. Two major railroads and nine smaller
(short line) rail lines travel more than 6,700 miles
of track in the state, according to the Railroad
Regulation Department of the Virginia State
Corporation Commission (Railroad
Regulation).
In
fact, CSX Transportation, one of the state’s major
rail companies, handles 240,000 carloads of freight
per year on the 1,000 miles of track it operates and
maintains in Virginia. It carries coal, stone,
marble, granite and even municipal waste throughout
the state.
However,
this is a far cry from rail’s heyday in the late
19th and early 20th century. When the State
Corporation Commission was first created in 1902, in
part to regulate the industry, 40 railroad companies
operated almost 4,000 miles of track. (“Making
Virginia Progressive: Courts and Parties, Railroads
and Regulators, 1890-1910,” Virginia
Magazine of History & Biography, Spring 1999.)
As
an aside, not everyone was pleased when a
progressive fever captured the country in the late
1800s and attempts were made to regulate large
utilities, such as railroads. William Vanderbilt,
the son of the railroad magnate Cornelius
Vanderbilt, is best remembered for his retort,
“The public be damned,” when asked by a reporter
if railroads should be run for the public benefit.
But
before the railroad monopolies, Virginia's multiple
railroad lines were extremely fragmented and failed
to connect with each other. The state’s Tidewater
ports each wanted rail service to their individual
cities to keep commerce in the state and prevent
Virginia farm goods from traveling through the ports
of Baltimore or worse still, Philadelphia.
In
Virginia, early railroad lines were chartered in the
1840s. By 1861, six Virginia towns had railroad
junctions for more than one rail company within
their boundaries. In Alexandria and Richmond, each
rail line even had a separate terminal building.
“Union stations,” where multiple railroad lines
met, did not develop until much later (Virginia
Places -- Railroad Cities). Because railroad
lines failed to meet, there was a need for
“draymen” or wagon drivers to carry freight
between train stations.
During
the Civil War, Virginia’s railways helped the
Confederacy survive. The Manassas Gap Railroad,
which linked the Shenandoah Valley with Northern
Virginia, had the distinction of carrying 10,000
soldiers from Delaplane (then known as Piedmont) to
Manassas Junction, according to a Washington
Times article by Jack Trammell a few years back
(“Virginia Railroads Vital to the Southern
Cause,” August 11, 2001). It is considered the
first large military movement by rail in history.
The
MG was only one of 14 major railroads in Virginia
during the Civil War. The state had one quarter of
the Confederacy’s total railroad resources. This
was one of the reasons Richmond became the
Confederacy’s capital. Another well-known railroad
during the Civil War period was the Orange &
Alexandria Railroad. It ran from Alexandria to
Gordonsville in Orange County. Union soldiers
captured its major assets in 1861, but employees
kept it running and it contributed to most major
campaigns. The Norfolk Southern, the state’s other
major railroad today, now operates the line.
The
post-Civil War era saw the rise of the coal hauling
railroads in the western part of the state. By the
1900s, four railroads brought most of Virginia’s
coal to salt water ports. These included the
Chesapeake and Ohio and Clinchfield, which are now a
part of CSX Transportation, and the Norfolk and
Western and the Virginian, now run by Norfolk
Southern (Virginia
Places -- Topography and Coal Railroads).
Constructing railroads through mountainous terrain
requires creative engineering. An incline reduces
the ability of a train to pull a load. In some
cases, pusher locomotives are used for extra power
when a grade is steep. They attach to the back of
coal trains and push them over mountain tops.
The
invention of the automobile and the ability to carry
freight over roads, as well as the development of
airline travel led to the decline of the railroad
industry. At least thirteen abandoned railroads are
scattered throughout the state, including lines from
Staunton to Lexington, Orange to Fredericksburg and
Alexandria to Bluemont (Abandoned
Railroads of Virginia). Another dedicated group
is trying to save four Norfolk & Western steam
engines abandoned at the Virginia Scrap Iron and
Metal Co. in Roanoke in 1950 and have whimsically
created a Web site that echoes the Lost Colony of
Roanoke theme (Lost
Engines of Roanoke).
By
1980, profits were rare on the 137,000 miles of
railroad track in the U.S. Federal regulation,
necessary at the turn of the century, required
railroads to make deliveries on little-used track.
Often only government subsidies kept railroads
afloat. The Staggers Act, passed that year,
deregulated the industry and helped with its
revival. Unprofitable railroad lines were abandoned.
Virginia’s CSX Transportation is the result of
mergers with over 200 railroads.
Another
factor in the revival of the railroads was the
growth of new commuter trains around metropolitan
areas. The Virginia Railway Express, which connects
Fredricksburg and Manassas with Northern Virginia
suburbs and downtown Washington, D.C., was launched
in 1992 and is one of the more recent commuter lines
on the American scene. Its early ridership was 2,000
people per day. By 2004, that number had jumped
seven-fold to more than 14,000 daily riders.
Rail
fans still make pilgrimages to the CSX railroad
tracks near the New River in southwestern Virginia
and southern West Virginia to get a glimpse of one
of the 24 or so trains that pass daily, hauling coal
and sometimes merchandise. These days freight cars
are sometimes 1,000 feet larger than in the past,
and a single train hauls up to 130 cars – a modern
marvel for rail aficionados.
So,
despite William Vanderbilt’s scorn, the Old
Dominion’s railroads survive and thrive.
NEXT:
Why Does Dillon Rule? Or Judge John’s Odd Legacy
--
September 19, 2005
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