The Virginian (VGN) was a Coal Road which ran from Norfolk, Virginia to Deep Water, West Virginia.. It took a more southerly route East of Roanoke than the N&W (Norfolk and Western). The Virginian merged with the N&W in 1959. After the merger, most of the coal traffic was transferred to the N&W line for the trip from Roanoke East. The Southside Virginia section of the track was used mostly for local traffic. Wood products were a major portion of is post merger traffic, with a furniture plant, charcoal plant, wood handle manufacturer, saw mills, and numerous pulp wood yards along its Right of Way (ROW). Much of its other traffic catered to the Rural nature of its route. Some of the trasckside industry included a fertilizer distributor, Tobacco processing plants, farm equipment dealers, grain mills, and farm supply houses. The N&W discontinued operations on this section of track in the eighties. Much of the tell tale signs of a railroad are disappearing. Industry is being built on the old ROW, overpasses are being removed, cuts are being filled in and road bridges are being torn down. The signs of the VGN are passing away more each year, and any hopes of reopening this stretch of line is fading fast.
Only limited resources of Virginian information exist on the Web. The above
photo of a Virginian Trainmaster was from the Virginia Tech (VPI) collection of
historic rail photographs. There've been some changes, and I can no longer find this photograph there, but here is a link to the Norfolk and Western Historical Photograph Collection of
the Virginia Tech Imagebase. It contains over 10,000 N&W related images, some Virginian. It's well worth spending a
few hours here if you are interested in the history of southern railroads.
An early Virginian steam engine is preserved at the Virginia
Transportation Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. Unfortunately, there are no
surviving ex-Virginian diesel engines in existence. The N&W turned them into
chopped up slug units. (Unpowered slave engines which run off of power supplied
from the master engine. They have electric motors, but no engine, just dead load
for traction.) The Norfolk and
Western Historical Society also features the Virginian.
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Now visit a short line in the Heart of Southside Virginia, the Virginia Southern .It runs from Burkeville, through Keysville, over Bugs Island Lake, past Clarksville, and into Carolina. Keysville is its base of operations and engines can often be caught here, as this one was. There is a very interesting chip loading operation at a nearby sawmill, along the tracks, just a few miles south of Keysville. |
