Railroad Acronyms

S P & S
Spokane, Portland and Seattle
Slow, Pokey and Seldom
Spit, Pop and Sputter
Slow, Poor and Stingy

The Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway (SP&S) (reporting mark SPS) was a United States-based railroad incorporated in 1905. It was a joint venture by the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railway to build a railroad along the north bank of the Columbia River. Remnants of the line are currently operated by BNSF Railway and the Portland and Western Railroad.

The railroad was chartered in 1905 by
James J. Hill to connect the two transcontinental railroads owned by him, the Northern Pacific (NP) and Great Northern (GN), to Portland, Oregon from Spokane, Washington, to gain a portion of the lumber trade in Oregon, a business then dominated by E.H. Harriman's Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads. Construction began in 1906 under the name Portland & Seattle Railway, proceeding eastward from Vancouver, Washington. 1906 also saw the start of construction of the line between Vancouver and Portland, including work on three major new bridges, crossing the Columbia River, the Oregon Slough and the Willamette River. The northernmost of these was the first bridge of any kind to be built across the lower Columbia River.

Despite legal challenges from Harriman, within a year the line had been built as far as
Pasco, Washington along the Columbia River, where it connected with NP. The first section to open was from Pasco west to Cliffs (near Maryhill), a length of 112 miles (180 km), on December 15, 1907.[6] Operation was extended west to Lyle, 33 miles (53 km) further west, on January 15, 1908, as construction continued on the 221-mile (356 km) section from Pasco to Vancouver.

In January 1908 "Spokane" was added to the railroad's name, making it the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway. SP&S freight and passenger service (from Pasco) to Portland was inaugurated in November 1908. By 1909 the railroad had completed construction of its line up to Spokane along the
Snake River. In 1910 SP&S gained control of the Oregon Electric interurban railway, which the Great Northern had acquired two years before. Under the control of the SP&S the railroad was extended southward to Eugene, Oregon by 1912. SP&S also operated a second subsidiary railroad in western Oregon, the Oregon Traction Company, which owned a route to Seaside, Oregon.

A third route on which the SP&S operated extended southward from Wishram, Washington to Bend, Oregon was the Oregon Trunk Railroad. Edward Harriman's Oregon & Washington Railway & Navigation Company also was building a railroad south from the Columbia River to Bend resulting in a railroad war in which each railroad attempted to sabotage the other. In the end, the railroad opened using mostly the track of the Oregon Trunk, with a short portion of the Oregon & Washington Railway & Navigation Company track, and both railroads used the route (an arrangement that still exists with BNSF owning the majority of the line and UP having trackage rights).

During
World War II the SP&S carried war materials to the Pacific Theatre; new industries located along the Columbia River, taking advantage of cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams on the river. New industries served by the SP&S included aluminum plants, sawmills, chemical factories and grain elevators.

In 1954 an SP&S train derailed after hitting a rockslide on the route to Bend, Oregon. Part of the train landed in the
Deschutes River, including a boxcar, which landed in a rapid that was later named "Boxcar Rapids" after the incident, which killed all crew members.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spokane,_Portland_and_Seattle_Railway

SPSMap.jpg


https://www.american-rails.com/images/SPSMap.jpg

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
M & S L RR
Minneapolis and Saint Loius
Maimed and Still Limping
Midnight and Still later
Miserable and Still Limping
Misery and Short Life
Movin' and Still Loosin'
The Louie

The Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway was created on May 26, 1870 by a group of Minnesota investors interested in establishing a railroad connection between Minneapolis and the agricultural regions to the south. Minneapolis was home to the largest flour milling operations in the country at that time. Wheat was the primary commodity grown in southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa. Not wanting to be captive shippers for railroad companies from Milwaukee and Chicago, the Washburns, Crosbys and Pillsburys - the men who owned the flour mills in Minneapolis - formed their own railroad as a way to ship wheat in and ship flour out. By 1880, the road had reached Albert Lea to the south and leased the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad to ship flour to Duluth, Minnesota for transport to markets served by Great Lakes shipping and to ship lumber south from Northern Minnesota and Northern Wisconsin using the St Paul and Taylor's Falls road as a means to capture a large portion of the lumber market. As the wheat growing regions moved north and west, the company eventually acquired and built lines to South Dakota.

Ultimately the railroad's primary line was extended south from the
Twin Cities into Iowa and then east to Peoria. It ran through Mason City, Iowa, which became an important traffic center for the railroad. One of the major attractions of the railroad was that it allowed freight bound for Illinois to bypass Chicago.

The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway had spurs into various parts of Iowa and a line into South Dakota. During the 1880s the M&StL went into its first
receivership leaving the Rock Island interests in control of the M&StL. The Rock Island turned over the operation of the western district of the Wisconsin, Minnesota & Pacific (another Rock Island road) to the M&StL by 1889 which ran from Morton, Minnesota to Watertown, South Dakota (the eastern district of the WM&P ran from Mankato, to Red Wing, Minnesota and later became part of the Chicago Great Western—the two districts of the WM&P were never connected). After receivership ended in the mid-1890s the M&StL purchased the western district of the WM&P in 1899 from the Rock Island and built an extension from Morton, Minnesota eastward toward Minneapolis connecting the western mainline with its southern mainline at Hopkins, thereby connecting the two mainlines and creating a continuous railroad system. In the 1890s the road built its Southwestern branch from Winthrop, through New Ulm, St James, and Sherburn in Minnesota, continuing to Estherville, Terril, Spencer and reaching Storm Lake in Iowa. A mile-long bridge was built over the valley of the Little Sioux River at Sioux Rapids, Iowa.

Its sister railroad, the
Iowa Central Railway began in Iowa in 1866 and merged with Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway in 1901. Even as far back as 1870, the company looked immediately to the Iowa Central as a natural ally to capture the Iowa wheat market and to feed the hungry mills along the banks of St Anthony Falls in Minneapolis. By 1916 the combined system had become stable and was absorbing other, smaller railroads.

The railroads sold land to prospective farmers at very low rates, expecting to make their profits by shipping farm products out and home goods in. They also set up small towns that would serve as shipping points and commercial centers, and attract businessmen and more farmers. The M&StL in 1905, under the innovative leadership of its vice president and general manager L. F. Day, added lines from Watertown to Le Beau and from Conde through Aberdeen to Leola. It developed town sites along the new lines and by 1910, the new lines served 35 small communities.


Not all the new towns survived. The M&StL situated
LeBeau along the Missouri River on the eastern edge of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. The new town a hub for the cattle and grain industries. Livestock valued at one million dollars were shipped out in 1908, and the rail company planned a bridge across the Missouri River. Allotment of land on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in 1909 promised further growth, but the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (the "Milwaukee Road") had beaten M&StL to the punch crossing the Missouri River and becoming the last transcontinental line in 1909 when Seattle was reached ending M&StL's push to cross the Missouri River. LeBeau would be the western terminus of the road. By the early 1920s, however, troubles multiplied, with the murder of a local rancher, a fire that destroyed the business district, and drought that ruined ranchers and farmers alike. LeBeau became a ghost town.

The railroad was also having financial problems as the 1920s dawned. The USRA takeover of the US railroad system during World War I turned out to be disastrous for the M&StL. The USRA mis-managed many roads and the M&StL was among those to suffer the worst of USRA mismanagement. By 1923, financial difficulties brought on by USRA mismanagement led the road to again enter receivership by mid-year. William Bremner was appointed receiver and the road struggled mightily throughout the remainder of the 1920s. The court overseeing the receivership would not allow expenditures that would have contributed to improved physical plant and greater efficiency, such as new locomotives, modern rolling stock and heavier rail. Bremner soldiered on overseeing the operations of the road, but there were almost no efforts made at reorganizing the road, as what little cash was available was used to pay bankruptcy creditors. In 1927, the Great Northern Railway (GN) and the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) announced their intentions to merge and would include M&StL in the new "Great Northern Pacific Railway." On an inspection tour of the road with Bremner as part of goodwill in the merger proceedings, GN's Ralph Budd found the M&StL to be in deplorable condition and wrote to a colleague that he was even more convinced that M&StL could never make it as a stand-alone carrier. Still, the case was brought before the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) which approved the merger, except that GN and NP would have to divest themselves of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q). Not wanting to part with its very lucrative link to Chicago, GN and NP dropped the merger case and M&StL remained independent while remaining in serious financial trouble, with the Great Depression just around the corner. During the first part of the 1930s, several suggestions were made to sell off M&StL piecemeal to whomever wanted its disparate pieces. The Illinois Central, CB&Q, Soo Line, GN, Wabash Railroad and the Chicago and North Western Railway (C&NW) comprised a syndicate called Associated Railways that was to determine how the M&StL should be broken up. Competing forces with company employees and its receivers on one hand and Associated on the other brought further complexity to M&StL's already precarious position each lobbying their positions before the ICC on the matter. Despite the fight for the railroad to be sold to a larger operation, broken up piecemeal, or shut down entirely, Lucian Sprague took over as receiver in 1935 after Bremner unexpectedly died in November 1934. Sprague streamlined the company and its assets by selling off scrap, increasing efficiency and ordering significant abandonments, mostly in Iowa. The most notable abandonment was the portion of the Southwestern between Storm Lake, Iowa and Spencer, Iowa which was abandoned in 1936 and the huge bridge that spanned the Little Sioux River valley was dismantled. The Milwaukee Road offered to take over operations along the Storm Lake, Truesdale, Rembrandt remnants of the Southwestern north of Storm Lake thereby allowing abandonment to proceed. Other abandonments were granted in the late 1930s in Iowa and South Dakota, trimming 17 percent of railroad in Iowa alone. With these cost saving measures, Sprague began efforts at reorganizing the property in 1940. By 1942 Sprague was elevated to chairman/president and orchestrated a reorganization that year. The effort was a success and in 1943 the receivership was terminated and ownership was returned to the railroad.

Despite the curious route structure of the road, it prospered as a bridge line between western and eastern markets in the year following
World War II. As a result of prosperous years following the war, Sprague's successful management of the road allowed it to be exposed to corporate raiders, such as Benjamin W. Heineman who in late 1953 began orchestrating a takeover of the company and lobbing charges of malfeasance against the Sprague administration. The battle for the road continued through the remainder of 1953 and in to 1954 with both Sprague and Heineman taking to the press to malign the other. Sprague was ousted in a dramatic shareholders battle orchestrated by Heineman in May 1954.

Heineman had no intention of operating the M&StL. He was not a railroad man. He was simply a corporate raider with a great deal of capital at his disposal from his business partnerships. With M&StL, his allegiance was not to the road's customers, or employees, or service territory, but only to shareholder value which is why he ultimately ended up winning the shareholders battle against Sprague. Few M&StL shareholders had a direct connection to the company. Most shareholders were people from the east and Heineman played masterfully to their investment that a new management team would increase their value in the company. Further, Heineman believed a great deal of money could be made through merger rather than on operating a railroad.

Not long after his arrival, however, Heineman saw great potential in the M&StL as a stand-alone company seeing the road had modern rolling stock, no bonded debts, was making money and had paid over $6M in dividends since receivership had ended back in 1943. The road tried valiantly to acquire the Toledo, Peoria & Western in 1954 and 1955. TP&W would extend M&StL eastward connecting with the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and Nickel Plate Road in the east, and the Santa Fe Railroad in the west. However, Heineman's heavy handed tactics in acquiring the M&StL did little to endear himself to the shareholders of the TP&W. The PRR and the Santa Fe quickly entered the fray attempting to prevent M&StL from acquiring the TP&W seeing as Heineman's group was also acquiring stock in the Monon Railroad. The presidents of both the PRR and the Santa Fe held warm relations with Lucian Sprague, but held disdain for Heineman and eventually the PRR and Santa Fe were able to jointly acquire the TP&W at the price of $140 per share, much to the ire of Heineman who felt betrayed by TP&W shareholders after having bid up the price thinking his bids would win out. The plan backfired and Heineman eventually left for C&NW in 1956 after his group had gained controlling interest in that road.

Not long after Heineman's departure the M&StL acquired the Minnesota Western Railroad, which was the successor line to the famous Luce Line Railroad in central Minnesota. In a move that baffles many to this day in railroad circles, the M&StL purchase of the MW was intended to show increased focus on industrial development for the M&StL. The move had only marginal effects on traffic along the MW and contributed only insignificant profits to the M&StL. In early 1960, the MW was renamed Minneapolis Industrial Railway furthering the campaign of industrialization the road was trying to capture. Only one piece of rolling stock was painted in the MIR livery - a former MW caboose.

By 1960, things were business as usual for M&StL. At the January 1960 board meeting, members received traffic and financial forecasts for 1960. The company was in good financial condition even as competition for freight from trucks, barges and other roads was eating away at M&StL's traffic base. In April, however, a company meeting was called at the M&StL office building in Minneapolis where Chairman Max Swiren and President Albert Schroeder got right to the point - the M&StL would become part of C&NW (returning control to Ben Heineman), pending approval by regulators and the boards of both companies. On November 1, 1960, the C&NW acquired the properties of the M&StL.


It is unlikely that the M&StL would have survived the 1960s as a stand-alone company. The merger of the Hill Lines in 1970 would have eventually done in the company as M&StL enjoyed significant bridge traffic from both GN and NP. The BN merger would have meant a massive loss of bridge traffic as BN would have done what it could to keep that traffic on its own rails. M&StL was losing less-than-carload (LCL) traffic to the trucking and barge industries which eroded traffic further. The other Granger mergers as well as bankruptcies would have crippled M&StL remaining bridge connections. Losing out on the TP&W property in the mid-1950s was a significant setback for the company. Things might have turned out different for the M&StL had it been able to acquire the TP&W. Perhaps the company would have eventually merged with a partner other than C&NW. In the end, Chairmen Swiren and President Schroeder recognized that the losses the M&StL had already suffered - and other losses it was sure to suffer in the future - was a clear indication that merger was really the only option left for the company. So, the company was sold when its value was as high as the Directorate thought they could get for their company.

By 1963, long-haul traffic had been transferred to former C&NW routes. Large sections of the former M&StL were abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The MW was ripped up in two stages between 1968 and 1970. In the end, Ralph Budd had been right about the M&StL in 1927 predicting the company would never survive. The company survived another 33 years to 1960, but the M&StL was one of the earliest victims of the mass mergers in the railroad industry of the 1950s and 1960s ending M&StL's career as a stand-alone carrier and resulting in the eventual abandonment of nearly the entire property.


MSTL_Map.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_and_St._Louis_Railway

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
B N
Burlington Northern
Bad News
Bankrupt Northern
Better than Nothing
Big Noodle
Big Northern
Big Nothing
Booze & Narcotics
Burlington Nothing
Bought Nothing
Bound Nowhere
Frisco Northern

The Burlington Northern Railroad (reporting mark BN) was a United States-based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996.

Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroading with the chartering in 1848 of the
Chicago and Aurora Railroad, a direct ancestor line of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, which lends Burlington to the names of various merger-produced successors.

Burlington Northern purchased the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway on December 31, 1996 to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (later renamed BNSF Railway), which was owned by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation. That corporation was purchased by Berkshire Hathaway in 2009 which is controlled by investor Warren Buffett.

The Burlington Northern Railroad was the product of the merger of four major railroads: the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.

The four railroads shared a very intertwined history, due to the efforts of
James J. Hill, the railroad tycoon who had had founded the Great Northern Railway. Hill purchased an interest in the Northern Pacific in 1896 as the railway endured a period of financial turmoil. Hill attempted to merge the two railways, but was rebuffed by the leaders of the Northern Pacific.

In 1901, the two railways teamed up to purchase nearly all shares of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, giving both a needed connection Chicago, the nation's railroad hub. That same year, came the next attempt to merge the railroads with the establishment of the
Northern Securities Company, a trust that controlled all three, with Hill serving as president. The company was sued in 1902 under the Sherman Antitrust Act and in 1904 the Justice Department won in the Supreme Court ruling Northern Securities Co. v. United States.

Although the ruling forced the three companies to be operated independently, they were still closely linked, even sharing a headquarters building in
Saint Paul, Minnesota. In 1905, the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway was founded. Like the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, this new railroad was co-owned by the Great Northern and Northern Pacific and allowed both to access the Pacific Northwest.

Leaders attempted to merge another two times, in 1927 and 1955, but were unsuccessful.

The merger of the four railroads was finally approved in March 2, 1970 after a legal challenge that once again went all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the justices reversed the court's 1904 ruling against Northern Securities. A newly established
holding company, Burlington Northern, Inc. purchased the four railroad companies and created the Burlington Northern Railroad.

To further expand the Burlington Northern railroad, a single track was constructed in 1972 into the
Powder River Basin to serve various coal mines. The expansion was a source of traffic unprecedented in United States railroad history. In 1971, the first full year for the new railroad, trains carried 64,116 million revenue ton-miles of freight, by 1979 the total was 135,004 million. Most of the increase was attributed to Powder River coal from Wyoming.

The Burlington Northern, along with handling freight trains, briefly operated inter-city passenger trains. The BN had started operations just a matter of weeks before the end of service of the original
California Zephyr, which had been operated by the CB&Q, in conjunction with the Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific railroads, and continued to operate the North Coast Limited, "Mainstreeter" Empire Builder, "Western Star", Denver Zephyr, "Gopher", and "International", until Amtrak took over intercity passenger service in May 1971, thus becoming the last "new" Class I railroad to operate its own passenger trains. The BN also operated a commuter line inherited from the CB&Q from Chicago Union Station to the western suburb of Aurora, Illinois.

On November 21, 1980, the
St. Louis–San Francisco Railway was acquired, giving the railroad trackage as far south into Florida.

In the early 1980's two independently operated railroads, owned by Burlington Northern Inc. were absorbed into the Burlington Northern Railroad; the
Colorado and Southern Railway was absorbed in 1981, followed by the Fort Worth and Denver Railway in 1982.

The railroad relocated its headquarters from Saint Paul to
Seattle, Washington in 1981.

All of Burlington Northern, Inc's non-rail operations were spun off to a new company,
Burlington Resources in 1988.

The railroad once again relocated its headquarters in 1988 moving from Seattle to
Fort Worth, Texas.

On September 22, 1995, the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with the Burlington Northern to create the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. However, the merger was not official until December 31, 1996, when a common dispatching system was established, Santa Fe's non-union dispatchers were unionized and the implementation of Santa Fe's train identification codes systemwide. On January 24, 2005, the railroad shortened its name to BNSF Railway.

The Burlington Northern traversed the most northerly routes of any railroad in the western United States. These routes started at
Chicago, Illinois and ran west-northwest to La Crosse, Wisconsin. From here the routes continued northwest through Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota to Grand Forks, North Dakota. From Grand Forks the routes ran west through North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho to Spokane, Washington. The former GN routed through North Dakota/Northern Montana, crossing the continental divide at Marias Pass, while the former NP line routed through the southern part of Montana (which was spun off to Montana Rail Link in 1987), crossing the continental divide at Mullan and Homestake Passes. At Spokane the routes split into three. The former Great Northern route ran west to Wenatchee, Washington, crossed under the Cascade Range at New Cascade Tunnel on Stevens Pass, and descended to the Puget Sound region through Everett, Washington. The former Northern Pacific turned southwest towards the Tri-Cities, then northwest to Yakima, Washington, and crossed under the Cascade Range at Stampede Tunnel, descending to the Green River Valley at Auburn, Washington where it connected with existing NP lines from British Columbia to Portland, Oregon. The Spokane, Portland and Seattle ran southwest to the Tri-Cities, then followed the north bank of the Columbia River to Vancouver, Washington.

With the acquisition of the St. Louis – San Francisco Railway the route was extended into the
South Central and Southeastern United States.

Transport Statistics shows BN operated 23609 miles of line and 34691 miles of track at the end of 1970; it shows 4547 SLSF miles of line not including QA&P and AT&N. At the end of 1981 BN showed 27374 miles of line and 40041 miles of track.

At the time of the
1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens the summit of the volcano that was blasted away was owned by Burlington Northern. Following the eruption, Burlington Northern agreed to a land swap with the U.S. government and exchanged its square mile of land on the mountain for national forest land elsewhere to allow for the creation of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument to preserve the volcano and allow for its aftermath to be scientifically studied.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Northern_Railroad



burlington-northern-system-map.jpg


http://www.american-rails.com/images/burlington-northern-system-map.jpg

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
B N S F
Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Bad News Santa Fe
BeaNSnifF
Been Nothing So Far
Been Nuthin' Since Frisco!
Believe Nothing Shoot First
Been Nowhere Since Friday
Been Nowhere Since February
Better Not Ship Freight
Better Not Slip or Fall
Big New Santa Fe
Big New Super Frisco
Big Nasty Slow Freight
Bigger Name Same Fine Railroad
Binziff
Bob's New Santa Fe
Bought New Santa Fe
Brand New Santa Fe
BuN SnifF
Buns with Nothing, Salt and Fat
Burlington Northern Southern Franchise
But No Santa Fe
Buy Norfolk Southern Fast
Buy Norfolk Southern First
Buy Norfolk Southern and get Fat
Buy Now Sell Fast
Buy Now, Sell Forever
Bye Now Santa Fe

The BNSF Railway Company (
reporting mark BNSF) is the largest freight railroad network in North America, followed by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in second place, its primary competitor for Western U.S. freight. BNSF is one of seven North American Class I railroads and has 44,000 employees, 32,500 miles (52,300 km) of track in 28 states, and more than 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles (272 million km) in 2010, more than any other North American railroad. The BNSF and UP have a duopoly on all transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western U.S. and share trackage rights over thousands of miles of track.

The BNSF Railway Company is the principal operating subsidiary of parent company
Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad's parent company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.

According to corporate press releases, the BNSF Railway is among the top transporters of
intermodal freight in North America. It also hauls bulk cargo, including enough coal to generate around ten per cent of the electricity produced in the United States.

The creation of BNSF started with the formation of a
holding company on September 22, 1995. This new holding company purchased the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (often called the "Santa Fe") and Burlington Northern Railroad, and formally merged the railways into the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway on December 31, 1996. On January 24, 2005, the railroad's name was officially changed to "BNSF Railway," using the initials of its original name.

In 1999, Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the
Canadian National Railway announced their intention to merge and form a new corporation entitled North American Railways to be headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The United States' Surface Transportation Board (STB) placed a 15-month moratorium on all rail mergers, which ended this merger.

On November 3, 2009,
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced it would acquire the remaining 77.4 percent of BNSF it did not already own for $100 per share in cash and stock — a deal valued at $44 billion. The company is investing an estimated $34 billion in BNSF and acquiring $10 billion in debt. On February 12, 2010, shareholders of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation voted in favor of the acquisition.

BNSF's history dates back to 1849, when the
Aurora Branch Railroad in Illinois and the Pacific Railroad of Missouri were formed. The Aurora Branch eventually grew into the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, (CB&Q), a major component of predecessor Burlington Northern. A portion of the Pacific Railroad became the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco).

The
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) was chartered in 1859. It built one of the first transcontinental railroads in North America, linking Chicago and Southern California; major branches led to Texas, Denver, and San Francisco. The Interstate Commerce Commission denied a proposed merger with the Southern Pacific Transportation Company in the 1980s.

The
Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) was created in 1970 through the consolidation of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. It absorbed the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco) in 1980. Its main lines included Chicago-Seattle with branches to Texas (ex-Burlington) and Montgomery, Alabama (ex-Frisco), and access to the low-sulfur coal of Wyoming's Powder River Basin.

On June 30, 1994, BN and ATSF announced plans to merge; they were the largest and smallest (by mileage) of the "Super Seven," the seven largest of the then-twelve U.S.
Class I railroads. The long-rumored announcement was delayed by a disagreement over the disposition of Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corporation, a gold mining subsidiary that ATSF agreed to sell to stockholders.This announcement began the next wave of mergers, as the "Super Seven" were merged down to four in the next five years. The Illinois Central Railroad and Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS), two of the five "small" Class Is, announced on July 19 that the former would buy the latter, but this plan was called off on October 25. The Union Pacific Railroad (UP), another major Western system, started a bidding war with BN for control of the SF on October 5. The UP gave up on January 31, 1995, paving the way for the BN-ATSF merger. Subsequently, the UP acquired the Southern Pacific Transportation Company (SP) in 1996, and Eastern systems CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway split Conrail in 1999.

On February 7, 1995, BN and ATSF heads
Gerald Grinstein and Robert D. Krebs both announced shareholders had approved the plan, which would save overhead costs and combine BN's coal and ATSF's intermodal strengths. Although the two systems complemented each other with little overlap, in contrast to the Santa Fe-Southern Pacific merger, which failed because it would have eliminated competition in many areas of the Southwest, BN and ATSF came to agreements with most other Class Is to keep them from opposing the merger. UP was satisfied with a single segment of trackage rights from Abilene, Kansas to Superior, Nebraska, which BN and ATSF had both served. KCS gained haulage rights to several Midwest locations, including Omaha, East St. Louis, and Memphis, in exchange for BNSF getting similar access to New Orleans. SP, initially requesting far-reaching trackage rights throughout the West,[16] soon agreed on a reduced plan, whereby SP acquired trackage rights on ATSF for intermodal and automotive traffic to Chicago, and other trackage rights on ATSF in Kansas, south to Texas, and between Colorado and Texas. In exchange, SP assigned BNSF trackage rights over the former Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad between El Paso and Topeka and haulage rights to the Mexican border at Eagle Pass, Texas. Regional Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway also obtained trackage rights over BN from Peoria to Galesburg, Illinois, a BN hub where it could interchange with SP (which had rights on BN dating from 1990). The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approved the BNSF merger on July 20, 1995 (with final approval on August 23), less than a month before UP announced on August 3 that it would acquire SP. Parents Burlington Northern Inc. and Santa Fe Pacific Corporation were acquired on September 22, 1995 by the new Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation. The merger of the operating companies was held up by issues with unions; ATSF merged on December 31, 1996 into BN, which was renamed the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company.

BNSF_Railway_system_map.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
M D & V
Maryland, Delaware and Virginia Railroad
Many Dirty Visits

Chincoteague was the first Eastern Shore community to acquire a railroad connection. In 1876, the Worcester Railroad (which was controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad) built the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Railroad south from Snow Hill, Maryland. It ended at Franklin City, on the edge of Chincoteague Bay just south of the Maryland/Virginia boundary. The line served the Chincoteague area until 1955.


In 1879, an article in Harper's New Monthly Magazine highlighted how the presence/absence of railroad connections shaped the economy and lifestyle of the northern part vs. the southern part of the Delmarva Peninsula:
The northern part of the peninsula, along the line of the railroad which is the connecting link between it and the great cities north and south of it, has a progressive manufacturing community...

For sixty-five miles of the lower length of the peninsula there is no railroad, and that in a country rich in natural products, easy of cultivation, and delightful in climate; there are but few steam saw or grist mills in a region abounding in valuable timber, and where corn meal is the staff of life; there are no steamboat lines on the Atlantic side, and but few on the Chesapeake, where almost the only means of being reached from the outside world is by water travel.

Thus the southern peninsula, the garden spot of the country, to whose shore Nature seems to have invited man by every bounty she could lavish upon it, appears to be cut loose from the rest of the world, sleepily floating in the indolent sea of the past, incapable of crossing the gulf which separates it from outside modern life, and undesirous of joining in the race toward the wonderful future.

eshore.jpg

The Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Railroad (in red) reached Franklin City in 1876, providing an outlet for shipping seafood from Chincoteague to customers in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York
Source: David Rumsey Map Collection,
Cram's Railroad & County Map Of Virginia, W. Virginia, Maryland & Delaware

http://www.virginiaplaces.org/rail/easternshore.html

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
B R & P
Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh
Bumpy, Rocky, and Peculiar
Bums, Robbers and Pickpockets

By the middle of the 19th century, American industry had found the means of both utilizing the bituminous coal of western Pennsylvania and transporting it economically from the mines to those who needed it. Initially, this meant steam power, in both the railroad locomotives and the factories. The immediate consequence was the need for a railroad line to haul coal from the hills of Pennsylvania to the cities of Rochester and Buffalo as well as the smaller towns and villages. The needs of the latter motivated them to invest, both individually and municipally, in the new rail companies that arose almost as profusely as spring flowers.

In the simplest terms, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway was required to pick up precisely what the
Rochester and State Line Railroad and the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad had dropped, the coal-hauling market between the coalfields of western Pennsylvania and the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. The mines produced steam coal, and the factories and the railroads of the Northeast needed it, in vast amounts. The reality, however, was far less simple. The great need of the coal-transportation market attracted aggressive competitors, and the laissez-faire environment of the day encouraged tactics that included paper railroads, buying and selling of corporations as though they were used cars, and financial manipulation by syndicates of investors.

For Buffalo, existing coal transportation was limited to lake boats; for Rochester, the canals and the east-west railroads. These bottlenecks caused fuel shortages which, in turn, led to the development of such
paper railroads as the Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad as well as the Attica and Allegheny Valley, in the same year. The Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad was another scheme, although this one was actually built, to a degree.

In Rochester, both the seasonality of the
Erie Canal and the near monopoly of the Erie Railroad intensified the pressure for a new railroad running through to the coalfields. Another failed attempt to resolve this saw the also-never-built Rochester and Pittsburgh in 1853. Another line which was partially built but never reached Pennsylvania was the three-foot-gauge Rochester, Nunda, and Pennsylvania.

By 1869, much money had been spent, most of it to no good purpose, and many words had been uttered and printed, but there was still no efficient, reliable, all-weather route for the coal.


Although probably mythical, there's a story that the
Mumford merchant, Oliver Allen, arose from a dinner with some fellow businessmen at which the need for a new railroad had been the topic of a spirited discussion and exclaimed, "Let's build a railroad." Allen did not build the road himself, but his was the drive that led to the Rochester and State Line Railroad.

The Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company was born on 29 January 1881 from the remains of the R&SL. The latter had been sold on 20 January for $600,000 to a New York syndicate of investors led by Walston H Brown. Brown, of Brown, Howard, and Company, had experience in railroad building; his company typified the many financial speculators and investment organizations which dealt in railroad companies and their securities. Another investment company to figure prominently in the BR&P history was that of Adrian Iselin. Ab initio, these investors planned expansion into the lucrative coal-haulage market. The source of the coal had by this time expanded south through
western Pennsylvania into the Beech Tree area between Brockwayville and DuBois.

In a practice typical in the industry, so-called "construction companies" were formed. They were paper railroads
[note 9] intended for the actual building of new lines and branches but not permanent existence operating them. Thus, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, the Great Valley and Bradford Railroad, the Bradford and State Line Railroad, and the Pittsburgh and New York Railroad built their respective lines, and then the latter three companies were folded back into the Rochester and Pittsburgh in November 1881.

The R&P purchased the Pitkin Building on Main Street West and Oak Street in
Rochester and added a two-story Gothic structure to it. The board then hired a highly qualified manager in George E Merchant, who had excelled as a division superintendent for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St Paul, and Pacific. Among the issues he faced upon beginning work in the head office in Rochester were several pending lawsuits against the R&SL and disputes arising from the shady land acquisition practices of the company's forebear. Resolving these, he proceeded to improve the capital plant, including refurbishing the older locomotives and buying new ones. He bought more 4-4-0 Brooks engines, as well as a number of 2-8-0 Consolidations. Line construction absorbed considerable resources as well.

In 1882, through its subsidiary, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, it extended its trackage south from
Salamanca to reach the coal fields of Pennsylvania. To accomplish this required bridging the Kinzua Creek Gorge. The R&P used what was, for the time, the world's highest railroad bridge. Built by the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad and Coal Company, the structure was more than 300 feet (91 m) above the creek and more than 2,000 feet (610 m) long. Construction took only ninety-four days. The single track over the bridge was shared by the Erie and the R&P; this proved to be a bottleneck, and the company which succeeded the Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, built a forty-mile detour, opening it in 1893.

While the R&P was expanding on its south side, it also built on the north end. Using the Rochester and Charlotte, the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh, and the Perry Railroad as construction companies, it brought much greater capability to the old RS&L yard at Lincoln Park and extended its line to the coal pier on the
Genesee River at Lake Ontario (Charlotte).

Succumbing to over-expansion, the R&P went bankrupt in May 1885 after existing less than four years.

The vigorous expansion of the railroad, including land acquisition, the employment of literally thousands of laborers, and the purchase of locomotives and freight and passenger cars, placed upon the Rochester and Pittsburgh a burden that its revenue and capitalization could not sustain. On 30 May 1885, the
Supreme Court appointed a referee to whom it gave the authority to sell off the company's assets. The foreclosure had been forced by the Union Trust Company of New York City. On 16 October 1885, Adrian Iselin bought the remains of the R&P.

That October, it emerged in the form of a new company called the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, a name which accurately reflected the physical reality of its route structure. One of the forces at work in the reorganization which engendered the BR&P was a Rochester coal merchant named Arthur Yates. Not coincidentally, Yates was the line's biggest coal shipper.

The Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway was a company built on and around taking coal north out of Pennsylvania. The financial backer of the newly founded Rochester and Pittsburgh Railroad, the banking house of Adrian Iselin, owned not only an interest in the rail line but coal mines and coke processing facilities. The Iselin presence at the southern end of the BR&P was such that today's maps of the coal mining region show such place names as Adrian, Adrian Furnace, Adrian Mines, and Iselin Heights; moreover, the railroad named one entire branch after him. Iselin's intention was to ship 2000 tons of coal daily, to which end Iselin and the railroad established the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company, entirely owned by the R&P. Walston H Brown was president of both corporations. The company town at the southern end of the railroad, in the 11,500 acres (47 km2) acquired by the coal company in the Punxsutawney area, was given the name Walston, Pennsylvania. The initial coal production facilities yielded approximately six hundred tons daily, at a total mine-to-carload cost of seventy-three cents per ton.

The first coal to be shipped on the R&P went to the Rochester coal merchant, Arthur G Yates. Such was the demand for coal that the coal shipments began well before track construction had been completed, leading to constant conflict in scheduling. By 1886, the railroad had some 4,182 freight cars, and 3,028 of them were coal cars. Of those, perhaps 500 belonged to the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company. By the mid-1880s, the railroad was running forty or more coal trains a day. Since coke was a valuable commodity, the coal company built a mile and a quarter long string of 475 coke furnaces, the largest in the world at the time, producing 22,000 tons a month, some of which was shipped out by train. Much of the coke, however, was consumed on-site in refining the iron ore brought in by lakes freighter and trans-shipped to the iron mills by the coal trains on their way back south.

Two coal companies accounted for the coal trade carried by the railroad. At first competitors, the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company and the Bell, Lewis, and Yates Coal Mining Company became very good friends when Frederick Bell, George Lewis, and Arthur Yates took seats on the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway board of directors. In fact, with Iselin's resignation as president of the railway company, Yates took his place. The two coal companies then negotiated an agreement which eased competitive pressures and allocated access to the railroad's coal-transporting capacity. While Yates concentrated on coal, Merchant ran the railroad.

Part of Yates' contribution to the BR&P's ability to haul coal was the extension of the line north from Lincoln Park through Rochester up to the coal dock it built at the mouth of the Genesee River in 1896. With an initial capacity of 4,000 tons a day, it was expanded in 1909 and 1913. To get coal to Canada, the BR&P arranged a cross-lake ferry service with the
Grand Trunk Railway. This service was highly successful, carrying passengers and coal cars to Cobourg and other lake destinations. By 1913, over a million tons of coal a year passed through the Rochester coal dock.

As the national economy grew, more and more coal mines were developed along the BR&P routes. In fact, the new Indiana Branch soon yielded the greatest traffic volume as mines opened in the area south of Punxsutawney. By the 1920s, coal trains averaged 3,750 tons, requiring considerably better motive power than the archaic Consolidations of the earlier era. However, long coal drags with one or two Mallets at the head did not last forever. In the first quarter of the new century, the market share held by the comparatively costly union-made coal of Pennsylvania was driven down by the cheaper coal from the non-union mines of Kentucky and West Virginia. The companies of the
Pittsburgh Coal District sought federal regulation of coal industry wages but lost. In a series of moves to protect themselves, the coal companies transferred to the BR&P not only the short-line railroads they'd built themselves but also the Genesee Coal Dock facility. This had the effect of improving the coal companies' fiscal performance, but it effectively hung an anchor on the railroad's neck as it swam in deeper and deeper waters.

The headquarters of both the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway and the Rochester and Pittsburgh Coal and Iron Company were in the elegant building on Main Street West in Rochester, and the bitter arguments between William Noonan, the head of the railway, and L W Robinson, the head of the coal company, became the stuff of local legend. In the end, both companies lost. The railroad disappeared into the B&O, and the coal company, which survived at least until 1981 in dramatically reduced size, is today no longer to be found in Rochester.


Officially, the end came in 1932, when the line was absorbed into the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, giving the B&O increased access to New York State (they already had a toe-hold with their acquisition of the Staten Island Rapid Transit at the other end of the state).

The acquisition exemplified the endless machinations of the railroad era. For a while, the
Van Sweringen brothers wanted the BR&P, and Iselin was pleased to make the divestiture in 1928. The sale value of the company had been inflated by the contention between the Delaware and Hudson and the Baltimore and Ohio for the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway, making its sale a compelling decision for Iselin. The Pennsylvania coalfields were waning, thanks to non-union mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, and the revenues from the railroad had fallen correspondingly.

The D&H wanted westward routes, and the BR&P figured in their plans. The B&O had routes that the Van Sweringens
wanted, making a swap attractive to both companies. The ICC now regulated the railroads with a tight grip, and its view was that the B&O proposal to buy the BR&P would serve shippers better than would the D&H plan to lease the company's lines.

The B&O agreed in March 1929 to the purchase of the BR&P from the
Alleghany Corporation, getting ICC approval in February of the following year. The deal yielded the B&O the BR&P, the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad, and the Mt Jewett, Kinzua, and Riterville. It gave the Van Sweringens the Wheeling and Lake Erie. The formal hand-over occurred on 1 January 1932, forever ending the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway.

1903_Poor's_Buffalo,_Rochester_and_Pittsburg_Railway.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo,_Rochester_and_Pittsburgh_Railway

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
C & O
Chesapeake and Ohio
Cheapskate and Ohio
Cheapskate and Oreo
Cheesy
Controlling and Overpowering
Broken dishes

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (reporting marks C&O, CO) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond to the Ohio River by 1873, where the railroad town (and later city) of Huntington, West Virginia was named for him.

Tapping the
coal reserves of West Virginia, the C&O's Peninsula Extension to new coal piers on the harbor of Hampton Roads resulted in the creation of the new City of Newport News. Coal revenues also led the forging of a rail link to the Midwest, eventually reaching Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo in Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.

By the early 1960s the C&O was headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio, USA. In 1972, under the leadership of Cyrus Eaton, it became part of the Chessie System, along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railway. The Chessie System was later combined with the Seaboard Coast Line and Louisville and Nashville, both the primary components of the Family Lines System, to become a key portion of CSX Transportation (CSXT) in the 1980s.

C&O's passenger services ended in 1971 with the formation of
Amtrak. Today Amtrak's tri-weekly Cardinal passenger train follows the historic and scenic route of the C&O through the New River Gorge in one of the more rugged sections of the Mountain State. The rails of the former C&O also continue to transport intermodal and freight traffic, as well as West Virginia bituminous coal east to Hampton Roads and west to the Great Lakes as part of CSXT, a Fortune 500 company which was one of seven Class I railroads operating in North America at the beginning of the 21st century.

At the end of 1970 C&O operated 5067 miles of road on 10219 miles of track, not including WM or B&O and its subsidiaries.

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway traced its origin to the
Louisa Railroad of Louisa County, Virginia, begun in 1836, and the James River & Kanawha Canal Company, also in Virginia, begun in 1785. The first train ran on December 20, 1837.

Originally a feeder line to connect with the predecessor of the
Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad (RF&P) at what is now Doswell, by 1850 the Louisa Railroad had won the right in Virginia courts to build southeast (timetable east) to Richmond in competition with the RF&P. It also expanded west, reaching Charlottesville. In keeping with its new and larger vision, it was renamed the Virginia Central Railroad. However, plans to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains, the first mountain barrier to the west, at Swift Run Gap proved both financially and technically unfeasible.

The Commonwealth of Virginia, always keen to help with
internal improvements not only owned a portion of Virginia Central stock through the state Board of Public Works, but incorporated and financed the Blue Ridge Railroad to accomplish the hard and expensive task of crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains. Under the leadership of the great early civil engineer Claudius Crozet, the Blue Ridge RR built over the mountains using four tunnels: Greenwood Tunnel, Brookville Tunnel, Little Rock Tunnel, and the 4,263-foot (1,299 m) Blue Ridge Tunnel at the top of the pass, then one of the longest tunnels in the world.

At the same time, Virginia Central was building westward from the west foot of the Blue Ridge, crossing the
Shenandoah Valley (a part of the Great Appalachian Valley) and Great North Mountain, finally reaching the foot of the Alleghany Mountains (note that in Virginia Alleghany is spelled with an "a") in 1856 at a point known as Jackson's River Station, later to be called Clifton Forge.

To finish its line across the mountainous territory of the Alleghany Plateau (known in old Virginia as the "Transmountaine"), the Commonwealth again chartered a state-subsidized railroad called the
Covington and Ohio Railroad, authorized by the General Assembly in 1853. This company completed important grading work on the Alleghany grade and did considerable work on numerous tunnels over the mountains and in the west. It also did a good deal of roadway work around Charleston on the Kanawha River. Then the American Civil War intervened, and work was stopped on the westward expansion.

During the
Civil War the Virginia Central Railroad was one of the Confederacy's most important lines, carrying food from the Shenandoah region to Richmond, and ferrying troops and supplies back and forth as the campaigns surrounded its tracks frequently. It had an important connection with the Orange and Alexandria Railroad at Gordonsville, Virginia. On more than one occasion, the Virginia Central was used in actual tactical operations, transporting troops directly to the battlefield. But, it was a prime target for Federal armies, and by the end of the war had only about five miles (8 km) of track still in operation, and $40 in gold in its treasury.

Following the war, Virginia Central officials, led by company president
Williams Carter Wickham, realized that they would have to get capital to rebuild from outside the economically devastated South, and attempted to attract British interests, without success. Finally they succeeded in interesting Collis P. Huntington of New York. Huntington had been one of the "Big Four" involved in building the Central Pacific portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was just reaching completion. Huntington had a vision of a true transcontinental railroad that would go from sea to sea under one operating management, and decided that the Virginia Central might be the eastern link to this system.

Huntington supplied the Virginians with the money needed to complete the line to the
Ohio River, through what was now the new state of West Virginia. The old Covington & Ohio's properties were conveyed to them [Note: the name was Railroad at this time ... it will be changed later to Railway] in keeping with its new mission of linking the Tidewater coast of Virginia with the "Western Waters." This was the old dream of the "Great Connection" which had been current in Virginia since Colonial times.

On July 1, 1867, the C&O was completed nine miles (14 km) from
Jackson's River Station to the town of Covington, county seat of Alleghany County. By 1869, it had crossed Alleghany Mountain, using much of the tunneling and roadway work done by the Covington & Ohio before the war, and was running to the great mineral springs resort at White Sulphur Springs, now in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. Here, stagecoach connections were made for Charleston and the navigation on the Kanawha River (and thus water transportation on the whole Ohio/Mississippi system).

During 1869–1873 the hard work of building through West Virginia was done with large crews working from both ends: the new city of
Huntington on the Ohio River and White Sulphur (much as the UP and CP had done in the transcontinental work). The line was completed at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia in the New River Valley on January 28, 1873.

The
West Virginia stretch of the C & O was the site of the legendary competition between John Henry and a steam-powered machine; the competition is said to have taken place in a tunnel south of Talcott, West Virginia near the Greenbrier River. The C&O's westward expansion was completed at a cost of $23,394,263.69 (over $414 million in 2010 dollars).

Typical of the men who built the C & O during this period was
William Nelson Page, a civil engineer who had attended special courses in engineering at the University of Virginia before he went to work on the railroad. Page directed the location and construction of the New River Canyon Bridge in 1871 and 1872, and of the Mill Creek Canyon bridge in 1874. In 1875 and 1876, he led the surveying party charged with mapping out the route of the double-track railway to extend between Hampton Roads and the Ohio River via the New River and Kanawha Valleys of West Virginia. Like many men who came to West Virginia with the railroad, Page was struck with both the beauty and potential of the natural resources and is considered one of the more energetic and successful men who helped develop West Virginia's rich bituminous coal fields in the late 19th and early 20th century. Page and his wife Emma Hayden Gilham, settled in the tiny mountain hamlet of Ansted, West Virginia, a town located in Fayette County which was named for British geologist David T. Ansted, who had mapped much of the region's coal resources in 1853. The palatial Page Mansion was built on a high bluff overlooking the New River far below, where the C&O occupied both sides of the narrow valley. Between the bridge just below Sewell and the one at Hawks Nest, one track is on the west bank of the New River, and the other on the east bank.

Collis Huntington intended to connect the C&O with his western and mid-western holdings, but had much other railroad construction to finance and he stopped the line at the Ohio and over the next few years did little to improve its rough construction or develop traffic. The only connection to the West was by packet boats operating on the Ohio River. Because the great mineral resources of the region hadn't been fully realized yet, the C&O suffered through the bad times brought on by the
Financial Panic of 1873, and went into receivership in 1878. Williams C. Wickham was named as its Receiver. When reorganized, it was renamed The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Collis P. Huntington and his associates began buying up land in
Warwick County, Virginia. During the ten years from 1878 to 1888, C&O's coal resources began to be developed and shipped eastward. Transportation began of southern West Virginia coal to Newport News where it was loaded on coast-wise shipping and transported to the Northeast became a staple of the C&O's business at this time.

In 1881, C&O's new
Peninsula Extension was completed from Richmond through the new Church Hill Tunnel and down the Virginia Peninsula through Williamsburg to reach coal piers located on the harbor Hampton Roads, the East Coast of the United States' largest ice-free port. The Peninsula Subdivision featured gentle grades through coastal plains of the Tidewater region of Virginia, dropping only about 30 feet in elevation, from Richmond (54 feet above sea-level) to Newport News (at 15 feet above sea-level).

Collis P. Huntington helped develop the tiny unincorporated community at Newport New Point into a new
independent city with the coal and other railroad business and the development of Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company.

In 1883-84 the failure of the railroad to repay a loan led to the failure of the finance company
Fisk & Hatch and the Newark Savings Institution (which held much of its money with Fisk & Hatch).

In 1888 Huntington lost control of the C&O in a reorganization without foreclosure that saw his majority interest lost to the interests of
J.P. Morgan and William K. Vanderbilt. In those days before US anti-trust laws were created, many smaller railroads which appeared to be in competition with each other were essentially under common control. Even the leaders of large Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and New York Central Railroad (NYC), obstensibly bitter rivals, had secretly entered into a "community of interests" pact.

Morgan and Vanderbilt had
Melville E. Ingalls installed as President. Ingalls was, at the time, also President of the Vanderbilt's Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (The "Big Four System"), and held both presidencies concurrently for the next decade. Ingalls installed George W. Stevens as general manager and effective head of the C&O.

In 1889 the
Richmond and Allegheny Railroad company, which had been built along the tow-path of the defunct James River and Kanawha Canal, was merged into the C&O, giving it a down grade "water level" line from Clifton Forge to Richmond, avoiding the heavy grades of North Mountain and the Blue Ridge on the original Virginia Central route. On this line, trains descend nearly 1,000 feet in elevation to Richmond (54 feet elevation) following the path of the river.[6] This "James River Line" became the principal artery of eastbound coal transportation down to the present day.

Ingalls and Stevens completely rebuilt the C&O to "modern" standards with ballasted roadbed, enlarged and lined tunnels, steel bridges, and heavier steel rails, as well as new, larger, cars and locomotives.

In 1888, the C&O built the Cincinnati Division, from
Huntington, West Virginia down the south bank of the Ohio River in Kentucky and across the river at Cincinnati, connecting with the "Big Four" and other Midwestern Railroads.

From 1900 to 1920 most of the C&O's lines tapping the rich
bituminous coal fields of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky were built, and the C&O as it was known throughout the rest of the 20th Century was essentially in place.

In 1910 C&O merged the
Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville Railroad into its system. This line had been built diagonally across the state of Indiana from Cincinnati to Hammond in the preceding decade. This gave the C&O a direct line from Cincinnati to the great railroad hub of Chicago.

Also in 1910, C&O interests bought control of the
Kanawha and Michigan (K&M) and Hocking Valley Railway (HV) lines in Ohio, with a view to connecting with the Great Lakes through Columbus. Eventually anti-trust laws forced C&O to abandon its K&M interests, but it was allowed to retain the Hocking Valley, which operated about 350 miles (560 km) in Ohio, including a direct line from Columbus to the port of Toledo, and numerous branches southeast of Columbus in the Hocking Coal Fields. But there was no direct connection with the C&O's mainline, now hauling previously undreamed-of quantities of coal. To get its coal up to Toledo and into Great Lakes shipping, C&O contracted with its rival Norfolk & Western to carry trains from Kenova,. W. Va. to Columbus. N&W, however, limited this business and the arrangement was never satisfactory.

C&O gained access to the Hocking Valley by building a new line directly from a point a few miles from its huge and growing terminal at
Russell, Ky., to Columbus between 1917 and 1926. It crossed the Ohio River at Limeville, Ky. (Sciotoville, Ohio), on the Sciotoville Bridge. With the connection at Columbus complete, C&O soon was sending more of its high quality metallurgical and steam coal west than east, and in 1930 it merged the Hocking Valley into its system.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_and_Ohio_Railway

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https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8572/16210658540_4e429d4e9c_b.jpg

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
CR
Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail)
Big Blue
Can't Run
Canrail
Clownrail
Con Job
ConWreck
Congresssional Rip-off
Connedrail
Corn Rail
Crappy Rap
Criminal Rail
Currently Retired
Q-Blue
The Constipated Railroad Company
The Coolest Railroad
Clinton Rail
Corn Rail
CockRoch

Conrail (formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, with reporting mark CR) was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name, and while it no longer operates trains it continues to do business as an asset management and network services provider in three Shared Assets Areas that were excluded from the division of its operations during its acquisition by CSX Corporation and the Norfolk Southern Railway.

The
Federal Government created Conrail to take over the potentially-profitable lines of multiple bankrupt carriers, including the Penn Central Transportation Company and Erie Lackawanna Railway. After railroad regulations were lifted by the 4R Act and the Staggers Act, Conrail began to turn a profit in the 1980s and was privatised in 1987. The two remaining Class I railroads in the East, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), agreed in 1997 to acquire the system and split it into two roughly-equal parts (alongside three residual shared-assets areas), returning rail freight competition to the Northeast by essentially undoing the 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad that created Penn Central. Following approval by the Surface Transportation Board, CSX and NS took control in August 1998, and on 1 June 1999 began operating their respective portions of Conrail.

The old company remains a jointly-owned subsidiary, with CSX and NS owning respectively 42 percent and 58 percent of its
stock, corresponding to how much of Conrail's assets they acquired. Each parent, however, has an equal voting interest. The primary asset retained by Conrail is ownership of the three Shared Assets Areas in New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Both CSX and NS have the right to serve all shippers in these areas, paying Conrail for the cost of maintaining and improving trackage. They also make use of Conrail to perform switching and terminal services within the areas, but not as a common carrier, since contracts are signed between shippers and CSX or NS. Conrail also retains various support facilities including maintenance-of-way and training, as well as a 51 percent share in the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad.

In the years leading to 1973, the freight railroad system of the United States was collapsing. Although government-funded
Amtrak took over intercity passenger services in 1971, railroad companies continued to lose money due to extensive government regulations, expensive and excessive labor cost, competition from other transportation modes, declining industrial business, and other factors.

Its largest Eastern railroad, the
Penn Central Railroad, had declared bankruptcy in 1970, after less than three years of existence. Formed in 1968 by the merger of the New York Central Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad (and supplemented in 1969 by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad), the PC was created with almost no plans to merge the varied corporate cultures, and the resulting company was a hopelessly entangled mess. At its lowest point, PC was losing over $1 million a day and trains were becoming lost all over the railroad.

In 1972,
Hurricane Agnes damaged the rundown Northeast railway network and threatened the solvency of other railroads, including the somewhat more solvent Erie Lackawanna (EL). In mid-1973, officials with the bankrupt Penn Central threatened to liquidate and cease operations by year's end if they did not receive government aid by October 1. This threat to U.S. freight and passenger traffic galvanized the Congress to quickly create a bill to nationalize the bankrupt railroads. The Association of American Railroads, which opposed nationalization, submitted an alternate proposal for a government-funded private company. Judge Fullam forced the Penn Central to operate into 1974, when, on January 2, after threatening a veto, President Richard Nixon signed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 into law. The "3R Act," as it was called, provided interim funding to the bankrupt railroads and defined a new Consolidated Rail Corporation under the Association of American Railroads' plan.

The 3R Act also formed the
United States Railway Association (USRA), another government corporation, taking over the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission with respect to allowing the bankrupt railroads to abandon unprofitable lines. The USRA was incorporated February 1, 1974, and Edward G. Jordan, an insurance executive from California, was named president on March 18 by Nixon. Arthur D. Lewis of Eastern Air Lines was appointed chairman April 30, and the remainder of the board was named May 30 and sworn in July 11.

Under the 3R Act, the USRA was to create a "Final System Plan" to decide which lines should be included in the new Consolidated Rail Corporation. Unlike most railroad consolidations, only the designated lines were to be taken over. Other lines would be sold to Amtrak, various state governments, transportation agencies, and solvent railroads. The few remaining lines were to remain with the old companies along with all previously abandoned lines, many stations, and all non-rail related properties, thus converting most of the old companies into solvent property holding companies. The plan was unveiled July 26, 1975, consisting of lines from Penn Central and six other companies—the
Ann Arbor Railroad (bankrupt 1973), Erie Lackawanna Railway (1972), Lehigh Valley Railroad (1970), Reading Company (1971), Central Railroad of New Jersey (1967) and Lehigh and Hudson River Railway (1972). Controlled railroads and jointly owned railroads such as Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines and the Raritan River Railroad (1980) were also included. It was approved by Congress on November 9, and on February 5, 1976 President Gerald Ford signed the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976, which included this Final System Plan, into law.

The EL had been formed in 1960 as a merger of the
Erie Railroad and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. It too was bankrupt, but was somewhat stronger financially than the others. It was ruled reorganizable under Chapter 77 on April 30, 1974 (as had the Boston and Maine Railroad), but on January 9, 1975, with no end to its losses in sight, its trustees reconsidered and asked for inclusion. The Final System Plan assigned a major section of the EL, from northern New Jersey west to northeast Ohio, to be sold to the Chessie System, which would help spur competition in Conrail's territory. Chessie however could not reach an agreement with EL labor unions, and in February 1976 announced that it would not be buying the EL section. The USRA hurriedly assigned large amounts of trackage rights to the Delaware and Hudson Railway, allowing it to compete in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., markets.

The
State of Michigan decided to keep operational the full Ann Arbor Railroad, of which Conrail would run only the southernmost portion. Michigan bought it and the whole line was operated by Conrail for several years until it was sold to a short line.

Conrail was incorporated in Pennsylvania on October 25, 1974, and operations began April 1, 1976. The government owned 85% with employees owning the remaining 15%. The theory was that if the service was improved through increased
capital investment, the economic basis of the railroad would be improved. During its first seven years, Conrail proved to be highly unprofitable, despite receiving billions of dollars of assistance from Congress. The corporation declared enormous losses on its federal income tax returns from 1976 through 1982, resulting in an accumulated net operating loss of $2.2 billion during that period. Congress once again reacted with support by passing the Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981 (NERSA), which amended portions of the 3R Act by exempting Conrail from liability for any state taxes and requiring the Secretary of Transportation to make arrangements for the sale of the government's interest in Conrail. After NERSA was implemented, Conrail, under the aggressive leadership of L. Stanley Crane began to improve and reported taxable income between $2 million and $314 million each year from 1983 through 1986.

Although Conrail's government-funded rebuilding of the dilapidated infrastructure and
rolling stock it inherited from its six predecessors succeeded by the end of the 1970s in improving the physical condition of tracks, locomotives, and freight cars, the fundamental economic regulatory issues remained, and Conrail continued to post losses of as much as $1 million a day. Conrail management, recognizing the need for more regulatory freedoms to address the economic issues, were among the parties lobbying for what became the Staggers Act of 1980, which significantly loosened the Interstate Commerce Commission's rigid economic control of the rail industry. This allowed Conrail and other carriers the opportunity to become profitable and strengthen their finances.

The Staggers Act allowed the setting of rates that would recover capital and operating cost (fully allocated cost recovery) by each and every route mile the railroad operated. There would be no more cross-subsidization of costs between route-miles (that is, revenue on profitable route segments were not used to subsidize routes where rates were set at intermodal parity, yet still did recover fully allocated costs). Finally, where current and/or future traffic projections showed that profitable volumes of traffic would not return, the railroads were allowed to abandon those routes, shippers and passengers to other modes of transportation. Under the Staggers Act, railroads, including Conrail, were freed from the requirement to continue money-losing services.

Conrail began turning a profit by 1981, the result of the Staggers Act freedoms and its own managerial improvements under the leadership of L. Stanley Crane, who had been chief executive officer of the
Southern Railway. While the Staggers Act helped immensely in allowing all railroads to more easily abandon unprofitable rail lines and set its own freight rate, it was under Crane's leadership that Conrail truly became a profitable operation. Soon after Crane took office in 1981 he shed another 4,400 miles from the Conrail system in the following two years, which accounted for only 1% of the railroad's overall traffic and 2% of its profits while saving it millions of dollars in maintenance costs. NERSA relieved Conrail of its requirement to provide commuter service on the Northeast Corridor, further improving its finances.

In 1984, the government put its 85% share up for sale. Bids were received from
Alleghany Corporation, Citibank, an employee buyout, Guilford Transportation Industries, Norfolk Southern Railway and a consortium headed by J. Willard Marriott. On February 8, 1985 Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole announced Norfolk Southern Railway as the successful bidder.

After considerable debate in Congress, the Conrail Privatization Act of 1986 was signed into law by
President Reagan on October 21, 1986. However, in August 1986, Norfolk Southern had withdrawn its bid citing Congress delays and taxation changes. The government decided its interest in Conrail would then be sold by the then-largest initial public offering in US history. The sale was effective from March 26, 1987 when Conrail's stock, worth $1.65 billion, was sold to private investors.


With Conrail's increasing success, its two eastern rail competitors,
CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway, engaged in a takeover battle to control the railroad and expand their systems. In 1997, however, the two railroads struck a compromise agreement to jointly acquire Conrail and split most of its assets between them, with Norfolk Southern acquiring a larger portion of the Conrail network via a larger stock buyout. Under the final agreement approved by the Surface Transportation Board, Norfolk Southern acquired 58 percent of Conrail's assets, including roughly 6,000 Conrail route miles, and CSX received 42 percent of Conrail's assets, including about 3,600 route miles.

The buyout was approved by the Surface Transportation Board (successor agency to the Interstate Commerce Commission) and took place on August 22, 1998. Under the control of lawyer-turned CEO
Tim O'Toole, the lines were transferred to two newly formed limited liability companies, to be subsidiaries of Conrail but leased to CSX and Norfolk Southern, respectively New York Central Lines (NYC) and Pennsylvania Lines (PRR). The NYC and PRR reporting marks, which had passed to Conrail, were also transferred to the new companies, and NS also acquired the CR reporting mark. Operations under CSX and NS began June 1, 1999.

As the names indicated, CSX acquired the former
New York Central Railroad main line from New York City and Boston, Massachusetts to Cleveland, Ohio, and the former Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway (NYC Big Four) line to Indianapolis, Indiana (continuing west to East St. Louis, Illinois on a former Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (PRR Panhandle Route line), while Norfolk Southern got the former Pennsylvania Railroad main line and Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad from Jersey City, New Jersey to Cleveland, and the rest of the former NYC main line west to Chicago, Illinois. Thus the Conrail "X" was neatly split in two, CSX getting one diagonal from Boston to St. Louis and Norfolk Southern the other from New York to Chicago. The two lines cross at a bridge southeast of downtown Cleveland

In three major metropolitan areas – North Jersey, South Jersey/Philadelphia, and Detroit –
Conrail Shared Assets Operations continues to serve as a terminal operating company owned by both CSX and NS. The Conrail Shared Assets Operations arrangement was a concession made to federal regulators who were concerned about the lack of competition in certain rail markets and logistical problems associated with the breaking up the Conrail operations as they existed in densely populated areas with many local customers. The smaller Conrail operation that exists today serves rail freight customers in these markets on behalf of its two owners. A fourth area, the former Monongahela Railway in southwest Pennsylvania, was originally owned jointly by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad and Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Conrail absorbed the company in 1993, and assigned trackage rights to CSX, the successor to the B&O and P&LE. With the Conrail breakup, those lines are owned by NS, but the CSX trackage rights are still in place.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrail

conrail1975_180.jpg

http://marketmaker.net/cnw/maps/conrail1975_180.jpg

Cheers,
USS ALASKA


 
ERIE
Erie RR
Dreary
Eerie
Weary
Weary Erie

The Erie Railroad (reporting mark ERIE) was a railroad that operated in the northeastern United States, originally connecting New York City — more specifically Jersey City, New Jersey, where Erie's former terminal, long demolished, used to stand — with Lake Erie. It expanded west to Chicago with its 1941 merger with the former Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, also known as the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad (NYPANO RR). Its mainline route proved influential in the development and economic growth of the Southern Tier, including cities such as Binghamton, Elmira, and Hornell. The Erie Railroad repair shops were located in Hornell, and were Hornell's largest employer. Hornell was also where Erie's main line split into two routes, one north to Buffalo and the other west to Cleveland.

On October 17, 1960, the Erie merged with the former rival
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad to form the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. The Hornell repair shops were closed, and repair operations moved to the Lackawanna's Scranton facility; this had a devastating effect on Hornell from which it has never recovered. (The repair shops have subsequently been used, intermittently, for the assembly of railroad/transit equipment.) Most of the former Erie line between Hornell and Binghamton was destroyed in 1972 by the floods of Hurricane Agnes. What was left of the Erie Lackawanna became part of Conrail in 1976. In 1983, Erie remnants became part of New Jersey Transit rail operations, including parts of its Main Line. Today, most of the surviving Erie Railroad routes are operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway.

The New York and Erie Rail Road was chartered April 24, 1832 by Governor of New York,
Enos T. Throop to connect the Hudson River at Piermont, north of New York City, west to Lake Erie at Dunkirk. On February 16, 1841 the railroad was authorized to cross into the northeast corner of Pennsylvania on the west side of the Delaware River. Construction began in 1836, and it opened from Piermont to Goshen on September 23, 1841. After some financial problems, construction resumed in August 1846, and the next section, to Port Jervis, opened on January 7, 1848. Further extensions opened to Binghamton December 27, 1848, Owego January 1, 1849, and the full length to Dunkirk May 19, 1851. At Dunkirk steamboats continued across Lake Erie to Detroit, Michigan.

In 1848 the railroad built the
Starrucca Viaduct, a stone railroad bridge over Starrucca Creek in Lanesboro, Pennsylvania which has survived and is still in use today. The viaduct is 1,040 feet (317 m) long, 100 feet (30.5 m) high and 25 feet (7.6 m) wide at the top. It is the oldest stone rail bridge in Pennsylvania still in use.

The
Paterson and Ramapo Railroad and Union Railroad opened in 1848, providing a connection between the Erie at the village of Suffern in Ramapo and Jersey City, across the Hudson River from New York City. Through ticketing began in 1851, with a required change of cars at Ramapo due to the gauge break. In 1852 the Erie leased the two companies along with the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad, and Erie trains begin operating to the New Jersey Rail Road's Jersey City terminal on November 1853 after a third rail for wide gauge was finished.

In 1852 the
Buffalo and Rochester Railroad, part of the New York Central Railroad system, completed a new alignment between Buffalo and Batavia. The alignment from Buffalo to Attica was sold to the Erie's Buffalo and New York City Railroad, a reorganization of the Attica and Hornellsville Railroad, and converted to the Erie's wide gauge. The extension from Attica southeast to Hornellsville opened on November 17, 1852, giving the Erie access to Buffalo, a better terminal than Dunkirk.

The Erie began operating the
Chemung Railroad in 1850; this provided a branch from Horseheads north to Watkins. The Canandaigua and Elmira Railroad opened in 1851 as a northern extension from Watkins to Canandaigua and was operated by the Erie until 1853. At this point, the Erie subleased the Chemung Railroad to the Canandaigua and Elmira. The C&E went bankrupt in 1857 and was reorganized in 1859 as the Elmira, Canandaigua and Niagara Falls Railroad, at which time the Erie leased it again. The Chemung Railroad reverted to the Erie in 1858 during the bankruptcy.

The
Canandaigua and Niagara Falls Railroad continued this line beyond Canandaigua to North Tonawanda with trackage rights over the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad to Niagara Falls and the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge into Ontario. This was leased by the Canandaigua and Elmira from its opening in 1853 to 1858, when it went bankrupt, was reorganized as the Niagara Bridge and Canandaigua Railroad, and was leased by New York Central Railroad. The NYC converted it to standard gauge and blocked the Erie from it.

The Erie pushed southward into the coal fields of
Elk County, Pennsylvania, Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, and Clearfield County, Pennsylvania to acquire a source of fuel for its locomotives. This action began with the February 26, 1859 merger of two earlier roads to form the Buffalo, Bradford and Pittsburgh Railroad Company. The new organization was sponsored by the New York and Erie Railroad Company, later known as the Erie. The B.B.& P. ran for 25.97 miles through Bradford, Pennsylvania after connecting with the primary line of the Erie at Carrollton, New York. The line came to a point known as Gilesville, the site of a bituminous mine, by January 1, 1866.

In August 1859, the company went into
receivership due to the large costs of building, and on June 25, 1861 it was reorganized as the Erie Railway. This was the first bankruptcy of a major trunk line in the U.S.

In 1863, the Erie leased the
Buffalo, New York and Erie Railroad and its subsidiary the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad, jointly operating it with the Pennsylvania Railroad's Northern Central Railway. The BNY&E had taken over the Buffalo and New York City Railroad in 1857 due to the Erie's bankruptcy, and the BNY&E used it west of Attica to reach Buffalo from its southeast end at Corning. The R&GV split from the main line at Avon, running north to Rochester. A joint through line was created between Philadelphia and Buffalo. At this time, the Northern Central leased the Elmira and Williamsport Railroad, forming the part of the line from Elmira south into Pennsylvania. After disputes due to charges of the Erie using its own line via Hornellsville (the B&NYC) too much, and problems with the gauge break at Elmira, this contract was cancelled in 1866. The Elmira, Jefferson and Canandaigua Railroad (and its Chemung Railroad) was transferred to the Northern Central, and a third rail was built to allow the Northern Central's 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge trains to operate over it.

To restore access to the
Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, the Erie got the Suspension Bridge and Erie Junction Railroad chartered in 1868. The line opened in 1871, running from eastern Buffalo to Tonawanda and then alongside the New York Central Railroad's Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad to the bridge. The Erie International Railway, chartered 1872 and opened 1874, provided a branch to the International Bridge, and the Lockport and Buffalo Railway, chartered 1871 and opened 1879, provided a branch to Lockport.

In the
Erie War of the 1860s, four well-known financiers struggled for control of the company; Cornelius Vanderbilt versus Daniel Drew, James Fisk and Jay Gould. Gould ultimately triumphed in this struggle, but was forced to relinquish control in 1872–73, due to unfavourable public opinion following his involvement in the 1869 gold-rigging scandal and to his loss of $1 million of Erie Railroad stock to the British con-man Lord Gordon-Gordon.

In 1869, the railroad moved its main shops facilities from Dunkirk to
Buffalo. Rather than demolishing the shops in Dunkirk, the facility was leased to Horatio G. Brooks, the former chief engineer of the NY&E who was at the controls of the first train into Dunkirk in 1851. Horatio Brooks used the facilities to begin Brooks Locomotive Works, which remained in independent business until 1901 when it was merged with seven other locomotive manufacturing firms to create ALCO. ALCO continued new locomotive production at this facility until 1934, then closed the plant completely in 1962.

The Erie still did not see profits and via bankruptcy was sold in 1878 to become the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad.

The New York, Lake Erie, and Western Coal and Railroad Company pushed the line south to
Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania in 1881 - 1882, a distance of 29.68 miles (47.77 km). This section encompassed the once significant Kinzua Bridge.

In 1883 the Erie expanded west beyond New York State when it leased the
New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad which ran westward from Salamanca. Eventually, the Erie would reach as far west as Chicago.

In 1886, it was reported that the Erie and the Reading Railroad shared ferry services between their two
Jersey City terminals, the larger being Pavonia Terminal, and Fulton Ferry in Brooklyn, New York for 11 round trips on weekdays and Saturdays, and four round trips on Sunday. In 1889, it opened a new bridge across the Hackensack River improving service to its terminals.

By 1893, the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad went into bankruptcy reorganization again and emerged in 1895 as the Erie Railroad.

In 1897, trackage rights were obtained by the Erie over the
Pennsylvania Railroad, from Johnsonburg to Brockway, Pennsylvania, then known as Brockwayville. The distance was 27.76 miles.

On May 1, 1907 the Erie obtained new trackage rights over the
Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburgh Railway from Clarion, Pennsylvania, north of Johnsonburg to Eleanora Junction (later called Cramer) in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. This covered a distance of 50.67 miles.

George W. Perkins brought Frederick D. Underwood into the Erie Railroad in 1910. During the eastern railroad strike of 1913 Underwood agreed to accept any ruling made by mediators under the
Newlands Reclamation Act. One of the demands made by Erie employees was a 20% increase in wages. Erie management had refused a wage increase but compromised by asking employees to wait until January 1915 for any advance. Union leaders agreed to make this an issue which Erie management would settle with its own men. However, W.G. Lee, president of the brotherhood of railroad trainmen, asserted that the only way "to deal with the Erie is through J.P. Morgan & Company, or the banks". Underwood responded from his home in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, saying "I am running the Erie Railroad: not George W. Perkins, nor J.P. Morgan & Co., nor anybody else."

In mid-1920s the successful
Van Sweringen brothers gained control of the Erie, improving operations (such as standardizing the railroad's locomotives and rolling stock) and bottom-line earnings. Unfortunately, both brothers—who at the time owned several other railroads—died at an early age but had they lived the shape of railroads in the east would likely look very different today.

Despite the ravages of the
Great Depression, the Erie managed to hold its own until it entered bankruptcy on January 18, 1938. Its reorganization, accomplished by December 1941, included the purchase of the leased Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railroad, swapping high rent for lower interest payments, and the purchase of formerly subsidized and leased lines. The reorganization paid off, as the Erie managed to pay dividends to its shareholders after the dust had settled.

The Erie prospered throughout the mid-1950s, but then began an irreversible decline. The company's 1957 income was half of that in 1956; by 1958 and 1959, the Erie posted deficits. The business recession that occurred in the 1950s led the Erie to explore the idea of doing business with the nearby
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W). The first result of this was the abandonment of duplicate freight facilities in Binghamton and Elmira, New York. Between 1956 and 1957, the Erie shifted its passenger trains from its former Jersey City terminal to the DL&W's newer one in Hoboken. Also, the DL&W's main line between Binghamton and Elmira was abandoned in favor of the Erie's parallel main line in 1958. These successful business consolidations led to merger talks (which, at first, also included the Delaware and Hudson Railroad); on October 17, 1960, the two railroads merged to create the Erie Lackawanna Railroad. Erie's large repair facility in Hornell closed — an economic impact from which the city has never recovered — and operations were consolidated at the Lackawanna's Scranton facility.


1884_Erie.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Railroad

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
B Z & C
Bellaire, Zanesville and Cincinnati
Bent, Zigzag and Crooked

The Ohio River & Western Railroad was a 112-mile long (180 km) narrow gauge railway that was incorporated in 1875 and operated from 1877 or 1878 till 1931. The railroad was located in southeastern Ohio. The line ran from Bellaire (east point) to Zanesville (west end). The last train to run on the railroad was on Memorial Day, May 30, 1931.

The Ohio River and Southwestern Railroad began construction as the Bellaire and Southwestern Railway in 1876, starting at Bellaire, Ohio, on the Ohio River. It commenced operation in the late 1870s. It had reached Woodsfield by 1880. By 1884, it had reached Zanesville, Ohio, leasing the Muskingum County Railway from the county for the western most nine miles of track. At about the same time, the name became Bellaire, Zanesville and Cincinnati Railroad.

The final mile to the Zanesville depot was achieved through a trackage rights agreement with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

The name Ohio River and Western Railway was adopted in 1903.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River_and_Western_Railroad

txu-oclc-644549 -1903.jpg


https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/...ville-appleyard_syndicate_lines_ohio-1903.jpg
1977

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
C W
Chesapeake and Western
Crooked and Weedy

The Chesapeake Western lines celebrated their centennial in 1995. The company has continued to survive as a separate operational unit and a subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation and today its lines are operated under the auspices of the Virginia Division. The "Crooked and Weedy" has persisted despite several grave threats to its existence including mismanagement by absentee owners, disastrous floods, and nearly being sold for scrap in the late 1930s.

The line began as an attempt to provide alternate transportation of goods from the Central Valley. After the Civil War the B&O had a stranglehold on rail traffic in the region, through its control of the Manassas Gap Railroad between Strasburg and Harrisonburg. The B&O also operated over its own line between Harrisonburg and Lexington. This latter line, the B&O's great southern extension, was constructed between 1872 and 1883, with the intention of reaching Salem. These plans never reached fruition, for the line never went beyond Lexington. The B&O's rival, the Pennsylvania, underwrote the construction the parallel Shenandoah Valley Railroad and won the race to Southwestern Virginia, reaching "Big Lick," now Roanoke, in 1881. The Shenandoah Valley became part of the N&W and was to serve as the Chesapeake Western's principal connection. The B&O lost its lease on the Southern line between Strasburg and Harrisonburg in 1896 and the Lexington line became a costly appendage.

The Chesapeake Western began with similar grand intentions. The railroad was to be a great east-west trunk connecting the coal fields of central West Virginia with the C&O at Gordonsville, Va. The passage through the Allegheny Mountains was to have been achieved at North River Gap, just west of Harrisonburg. The original part of the route, completed in 1896, connected the south end of the town of Harrisonburg with Elkton on the Norfolk and Western. This routing included a hefty five-mile segment of 2% grade coming west out of Elkton at the foot of Massanutten Mountain. Another stretch of 1.8%, Keezletown Hill, also lies between Elkton and Harrisonburg. Shop facilities were constructed at Elkton. The line also extended west from Harrisonburg to Dayton and Bridgewater.

The company reorganized and took the name Chesapeake Western Railway in 1901 and began the so-called "Western Extension," the long-awaited connection across the mountains into West Virginia. At the same time an eastward extension through the Blue Ridge at Powell's Gap was planned. The western segment reached Stokesville, at North River Gap, in 1901. From here the railroad served a cluster of narrow-gauge logging roads which hauled out timber from the mountains. The area's coal proved to be of no commercial value. Despite its lack of a western connection, the little line was not beyond pretension. In 1913, having been excluded from the new "Union Station" which served the trains of the B&O and Southern, the road built an elaborate new station and offices in Harrisonburg, on Bruce Street.

The Western Extension became a financial liability and was abandoned in two stages. The segment between Mt. Solon and Stokesville was torn up in 1930 and three years later the line was trimmed back to Bridgewater. In 1938 the absentee owners of the railroad were approached with an offer by Japanese interests to sell the line for scrap. At that time, the long-time General Manager of the line, Don Thomas, stepped forward to purchase the line. His acquisition was underwritten by the Norfolk and Western, which realized the importance of the C.W. Rwy. as a feeder connection. Four years later the line expanded, by assuming the ownership of the B&O line from Harrisonburg to Lexington. The Staunton-Lexington portion was promptly pulled up and the C.W. operated only to Staunton. In 1946 the line dieselized with the purchase of three 660 hp units from Baldwin.

In 1954 the N&W assumed direct ownership of the line, buying out Mr. Thomas. Yet, the line continued to be operated as a separate entity with offices in Harrisonburg. Gradually, over the years the line began to lose its identity. The Baldwins were scrapped in 1964, replaced by three Alco T-6's. Those were subsequently retired in 1985 and now NS diesels ply the rails of the Chesapeake Western. The Chesapeake Western name still appears in the Virginia Division Timetable and operations have expanded to include the ex-Southern Manassas Gap branch as far north as Bowman.

Norfolk Southern has continually invested in the physical plant, installing continuous welded rail over much of the route and replacing the bridge at Elkton which was destroyed by flood in 1985. The shops at Elkton were razed in 1989 and Chesapeake Western trains now run through to Shenandoah Yard. The original line between Pleasant Hill and Bridgewater was pulled up in 1987 and the old B&O south of Pleasant Valley was embargoed in 1985. This line has since been sold to local interests and is now operated by the Buckingham Branch Railroad. The Chesapeake Western lines continue to enjoy substantial traffic, owing in large part to the strength of the poultry industry in the Harrisonburg area.


Reference
Price, Charles Grattan. "The Crooked and Weedy:" Virginia's Chesapeake Western Railway. Waynesville, NC: 1992.

chesapeake-western-railway-map.jpg


http://www.american-rails.com/images/chesapeake-western-railway-map.jpg
2041

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
D & H
Delaware and Hudson
Delay and Hesitate
Delayed and Hungry
Desparate and Hungry
Dying and Hemhoraging

The Delaware and Hudson Railway (D&H) (
reporting mark DH) is a railroad that operates in the northeastern United States. In 1991, after more than 150 years as an independent railroad, the D&H was purchased by Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). CP operates D&H under its subsidiary Soo Line Corporation which also operates Soo Line Railroad.

As railroads grew in popularity, the canal company recognized the importance of replacing the canal with a railroad. The first step of this was the
Jefferson Railroad, a line from Carbondale north towards New York, chartered in 1864, built by the Erie Railroad in 1869 and opened in 1872. This was a branch of the Erie, running south from the main line at Lanesboro to Carbondale. Also built as part of this line was a continuation from the other side of the D&H's gravity railroad at Honesdale southeast to the Erie's Pennsylvania Coal Company railroad at Hawley. The Jefferson Railroad (and through it the Erie) obtained trackage rights over the D&H between its two sections, and the D&H obtained trackage rights to Lanesboro.

The other part of the main line was the
Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, which the D&H leased on February 24, 1870. The Delaware and Hudson already had a history of working with the Albany and Susquehanna, agreeing in 1866 to jointly build an extension to Nineveh and subsequently ship coal across the entire line. The two companies then entered into an arrangement whereby the Delaware and Hudson perpetually leased the Albany and Susquehanna for $490,000 per year. The connecting Lackawanna and Susquehanna Railroad, chartered in 1867 and opened in 1872, was also absorbed. The Albany and Susquehanna provided a line from Albany southwest to Binghamton, while the Lackawanna and Susquehanna split from that line at Nineveh, running south to the Jefferson Railroad at Lanesboro. Also leased in 1870 was the Schenectady and Susquehanna Railroad, connecting the Albany and Susquehanna at Duanesburg to Schenectady, opened in 1872 (reorganized as the Schenectady and Duanesburg Railroad in 1873).

On March 1, 1871, the D&H leased the
Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad Company, which, along with its leased lines, provided a network stretching north from Albany and Schenectady to Saratoga Springs, and continuing northeast to Rutland, Vermont, as well as an eastern route to Rutland via trackage rights over the Troy and Boston Railroad west of Eagle Bridge. The D&H also obtained a 1/4 interest in the Troy Union Railroad from this lease.

On March 1, 1873, the D&H got the
New York and Canada Railroad chartered as a merger of the Whitehall and Plattsburgh Railroad and Montreal and Plattsburg Railroad, which had been owned by the Rutland Railroad. This provided an extension, completed in 1875, north from Whitehall to the border with Quebec; a branch opened in 1876 to Rouses Point. Lines of the Grand Trunk Railway continued each of the two branches north to Montreal.

The D&H obtained
trackage rights over the Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad in 1886, extending the main line southwest from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre.

On July 11, 1889, the D&H bought the
Adirondack Railway, a long branch line heading north from Saratoga Springs along the Hudson River.

Some company directors questioned the wisdom of acquiring extensive rail systems in northern
New York State. A direct line to Albany, New York existed for many years through the canal and river system, so most of the coal markets in the area were already accessible. These concerns were overruled by the majority, who believed there would be great benefit to having an-all rail route to Upstate New York that was not nearly as vulnerable to winter weather as the canal. It was also desirable to avoid situations in which the company would have to rely on other railroads to reach its markets. The effort was helped by a report that estimated necessary upgrades to the canal would cost $300,000, an expenditure that would not be needed if rail routes could be purchased or leased.

In 1903, the D&H organized the
Chateaugay and Lake Placid Railway as a consolidation of the Chateaugay Railroad, Chateaugay Railway and Saranac and Lake Placid Railway. In conjunction with the Plattsburgh and Dannemora Railroad, which had been leased by the Chateaugay Railroad, this formed a long branch from Plattsburgh west and south to Lake Placid.

In 1906, the D&H bought the
Quebec Southern Railway and South Shore Railway, merging them into the Quebec, Montreal and Southern Railway. This line ran from St. Lambert, a suburb of Montreal, northeast to Fortierville, most of the way to Quebec City. The D&H sold that line to the Canadian National Railway in 1929.

The D&H incorporated the
Napierville Junction Railway in 1906 to continue the line north from Rouses Point to St. Constant Junction near Montreal, Quebec, from which the D&H obtained trackage rights over the Grand Trunk Railway to Montreal. This line opened in 1907, forming part of the shortest route between New York City and Montreal.

In 1912, the D&H and the
Pennsylvania Railroad incorporated the Wilkes-Barre Connecting Railroad, creating an interchange between the two lines at Hanover Township, PA, thus avoiding going through downtown Wilkes-Barre. Opened in 1915, this line runs north 6.65 miles to the D&H mainline at Hudson, crossing the Susquehanna River twice.

On April 1, 1930, the property of the Delaware and Hudson Company was transferred to the Delaware and Hudson Railroad Corporation, incorporated December 1, 1928. In 1938, the D&H started to act as a
bridge line, carrying large amounts of freight between other connecting lines.

In 1964, Norfolk & Western wanted the Wabash & Nickel Plate Roads. The ICC at the time informed them that in order to get those two roads, they would also have to take the
Erie Lackawanna & D&H. The D&H company was reorganized as the Delaware and Hudson Railway, and both roads were placed into Dereco, a holding company owned by Norfolk and Western Railway. After New York and Pennsylvania were hit by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, which destroyed almost all of the EL mainline west of Binghamton, NY, and following the bankruptcy of numerous northeastern U.S. railroads in the 1970s, including D&H and E-L, N&W lost control of Dereco stock. After several merger plans fell through, EL petitioned for and was included in the formation of the federal government's nascent Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail). While D&H was technically still owned by N&W, they were given financial support and told to "sink or swim" as an independent railroad again.

In 1980, Conrail sold the former DL&W Mainline from Binghamton to Scranton to the D&H; being a flatter, more direct route to Scranton, this acquisition allowed the D&H to abandon its famed Penn Division between Carbondale and the connection with the ex-Erie/EL at Jefferson Junction. The D&H was left out of Conrail in order to maintain a semblance of competition in the Northeast. While the success of this move has often been discredited, since the D&H was simply too small to compete with all of the markets served by Conrail, in fact the railroad doubled in size by being granted trackage rights over Conrail reaching Newark, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Washington, D.C. The remainder of the Penn Division from
Lanesboro, Pennsylvania, to Nineveh, New York, was abandoned after the Belden Hill tunnel was enlarged in 1986.

In 1984,
Guilford Transportation Industries purchased the D&H as part of a plan to operate a larger regional railroad from Maine and New Brunswick in the east, to New York City and the Midwest in the west, Montreal in the north, and the Philadelphia/Washington, D.C. area in the south. For only $500,000, Guilford purchased the entire railroad. The price tag reflected the D&H's horrid financial shape and the poor condition of its physical plant. At the time of the purchase, the D&H had little freight traffic, relying on Federal and State money to keep operating. Guilford's plans for expanded service did not come to fruition, and in 1988, after two intense labor strikes, Guilford declared the D&H bankrupt, abandoning its operation. Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, purchased the line south of Carbondale to Scranton and currently serves a growing number of industries in the valley under the auspices of the designated operator Delaware Lackawanna Railroad.

With the D&H in limbo, the federal government ordered the
New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway to operate the D&H under subsidy until such time as a buyer could be found. Guilford claimed that the D&H had assets of $70M at the time of the bankruptcy.

In 1991, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) purchased the D&H for $25M to give the CPR's transcontinental system a connection between Montreal and the New York City metropolitan area.

The D&H has been a difficult money-making venture for some time. As described above, it was originally constructed as a coal hauling route, and when that business declined it proved difficult to turn a profit. The D&H operates in some of the most rural areas of New York State, and very few industrial customers between Binghamton and Rouses Point remain. The railroad's current prognosis is arguably better than it has been in a long time. Along with the NYC connection, haulage agreements with other railroads are greatly increasing traffic. CP has been steadily using their high power
AC traction locomotives on their road trains on the D&H line, instead of their aging SD40-2 models. This is an indication of the increasing importance of reliable service. There are also major signal and track projects underway to modernize the former D&H lines.

D & H.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_and_Hudson_Railway
2084

Cheers,
USS ALASKA



 
M R & B T
Mississippi River and Bonne Terre
Mighty Rough and Bone Tired
Missing Rails and Broken Ties
Muddy Rails and Broken Track

The Mississippi River & Bonne Terre Railway (M.R. & B.T.) was a single-track
standard-gauge steam railroad that was located in southeastern Missouri and began service in 1892. It extended from Riverside in a general southwesterly direction to the lead-mining field in St. Francois County. The main stem, from Riverside to Doe Run, was 46.492 miles (74.822 km) long. Eight short branch lines had a total trackage of 17.418 miles (28.032 km). Sidings and spurs aggregated 30.664 miles (49.349 km), and all tracks owned 94.574 miles (152.202 km).

Predecessors
The minerals and supplies of the St. Joseph Lead Co., which operated one of the world-leading lead mines, were transported until 1880 on animal-drawn wagons between the mines and the St. Louis and Iron Mountain Railway. In 1880 the St. Joseph Lead Company laid the track a 10 miles (16 km) long narrow gauge railroad with a gauge of 3 feet (910 mm). It was inaugurated on 18 January 1880 and became known as the St. Joseph & Des Loge Railway. It was used to transport goods westerly from Bonne Terre to Summit, a point on the line of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway Company, but the mine products of the St. Joseph Lead Company had still to be hauled for 18 miles (29 km) by ox-team from the mines to Bonne Terre. The narrow-gauge line was apparently jointly owned by the St. Joseph Lead Company and the Desloge Company. It was removed after the M.R. & B.T.'s property was placed in service. The cost was split between both companies: The St. Joe paid 66% and the Desloge Company paid 33%. The St. Joe Lead Company acquired in 1887 the assets of the Desloge Lead Company, and tried to find a shorter route, to reduce the transportation cost.

M.R. & B.T.
The M.R. & B.T. was incorporated for a term of 50 years on May 11, 1888, under the provisions of Chapter 21, Articles 1 and 2, of the revised statutes of Missouri. The incorporators were nominees of the
St. Joseph Lead Company. The avowed purpose of the corporation was to construct, operate, and maintain a standard or broad gauge railroad, extending in a northerly direction from Bonne Terre, St. Francois County, through St. Francois and Jefferson Counties, in Missouri, to a point on the Mississippi River now known as Riverside. The proposed line was 30 miles (48 km) long, and the authorized capital stock had the value of $10,000 per mile, or $300,000.

The railway was initially constructed as a narrow gauge railroad between Bonne Terre and Riverside, a
wharf at the Mississippi River. The first section was inaugurated in 1890 and the Summit Railroad was subsequently abandoned. In 1894 the gauge of the railroad was re-gauged to standard gauge and later the track was expanded from Bonne Terre to Doe Run. It crossed the Belmont Branch of the Iron Mountain Railway at Doe Run Junction.

The main line of the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railroad was, after completion, only 46.492 miles (74.822 km) long, but it proved to be beneficial for the development of the Lead Belt, since there was a lot of traffic on the railroad. It was built similar to most trunk lines. A branch line was laid to Leadwood and there were several miles of feeders, turn-offs and sidings. The railroad ran through the growing towns of Bonne Terre, Desloge, St. Francois, Flat River, Rivermines, Elvins and Doe Run, whose economy benefited from the improved transport capabilities.

The inclines were below 1.8% and the curves had radii of 717 feet (218.5 m). The rail weights ranged between 75–90 lb/yard (37.5–45 kg/metre) similar to most trunk lines. Even so, the order for two
Baldwin 4-6-2 Pacific locomotives included the following caution: "Engine frames to be extra heavy throughout. Engine frames to be designed to withstand rough usage and considerable lateral thrust, which will be continually in evidence given that the road is all curves, there being only one tangent [straight track] which is a mile long."

The M.R.& B.T.'s main line from Riverside to Bonne Terre, 29.246 miles (47.067 km), was constructed for it by the St. Joseph Lead Company during 1889 and 1890. It was placed in regular service on March 10, 1890. The extension of the main line from Bonne Terre to Doe Run Junction, 13.898 miles (22.367 km), was also built by the St. Joseph Lead Company for the M.R. & B.T. It was placed in service in June, 1892. The southerly end of the main stem, extending from Doe Run Junction to Doe Run, 2.348 miles (3.779 km), was built, during 1892, by the Doe Run Lead Company, a subsidiary of the St. Joseph Lead Company. It was operated by the M.R. & B.T. under lease until September, 1893, when it was purchased outright. The foregoing 46.492 miles (74.822 km) of line were originally built as narrow gauge, but was changed to standard gauge in 1893–1894.

Aftermath
The Missouri Pacific acquired the M.R. & B.T. in 1929 and merged it with the Missouri-Illinois Railroad, which operated it as an independent subsidiary until 1945. In 1938 a gasoline passenger train operated and made two round trips per day. The
Missouri Pacific Railway subsequently acquired 51% of the Missouri–Illinois Railroad, with which it merged in 1978.

The 11-mile-long (18 km) section from Derby at the junction with the Missouri-Illinois Railway to Doe Run ceased operations in 1941. The 22-mile-long (35 km) section from Howe to Bonne including the tunnel were disused in 1969. The two 8-mile-long (13 km) sections up north and south of Bonne Terre were still in use in the late 1980s.

Map_of_the_Mississippi_River_&_Bonne_Terre_Railway.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_and_Bonne_Terre_Railway
2140

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
W C
Wisconsin Central
We Could Wreck
We're Cheap
Whiskey Central
Wood Chip Line
Wrecking Crew

The original Wisconsin Central Railroad Company was a major early railroad of northern Wisconsin, building lines up through the forested wilderness, and opening large tracts to logging and settlement. It established stations which would grow into a string of cities and towns between Stevens Point and Ashland, including Marshfield and Medford, and it connected these places to Chicago and St. Paul. It played a major role in building Chicago's Grand Central Station.

Despite these successes, it struggled financially from the start and was bankrupt by 1879. It was leased to the
Northern Pacific Railway from 1889 to 1893 and was finally reorganized from bankruptcy in 1897 as the Wisconsin Central Railway.

By the time of the
Civil War the southern half of Wisconsin was somewhat settled. Much of the north, however, remained wilderness, including swaths of beautiful virgin timber and deposits of iron ore. Treaties with Native Americans had placed most of this land in the hands of the federal government. Logging of the white pine had begun along the rivers, where the product could be floated out, but some stretches of timber stood far from large enough streams for river-logging. One such stretch lay between the Chippewa and Wisconsin Rivers

At that time, U.S. feelings toward
Great Britain were not as warm as today. Britain was officially neutral during the Civil War, but many of the British elites sympathized with the Confederacy. This was only 50 years after the War of 1812, in which Britain had captured Prairie du Chien, among other indignities. And it was less than 100 years after the American Revolution. The British Province of Canada lay just across Lake Superior, and the War Department wanted the ability to move troops and supplies to that border, just in case. Toward that end, the government cut military wagon roads through the northern forest. These were financed in part by land grants, where the government gave the road-builders timber and land close to the roads. But these stump-choked wagon roads would have transported war materials very slowly, so in 1864 the U.S. Congress offered similar land grants to encourage several proposed railroad-building projects from Portage up through the center of the state to Superior. Generally, if a railroad was built of adequate quality, its company received half the land and timber for ten miles on either side of the segments built - the odd-numbered sections.

Two companies were established in 1866 to take advantage of Congress's offered land grants. The first corporation, the Winnebago and Lake Superior Railroad Company, was chartered to build from
Menasha, the manufacturing center on Lake Winnebago, north to Stevens Point, and then onward to Superior. This railroad eventually was headed by Judge George Reed of Manitowoc. The second corporation, the Portage and Superior Railroad Company, intended to build from the city of Portage north to Stevens Point, also to Superior. The two railroads were consolidated in 1869 to become the Portage, Winnebago, and Superior Railroad Company, and this railroad's name was changed to the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company in 1871. The Manitowoc and Minnesota Railroad, which Reed also headed, was consolidated into the Wisconsin Central in July 1871. None of these early railroad companies laid track, but their mergers provided corporate structure to move forward.

As corporate consolidation proceeded, Reed planned to build the first leg of the Wisconsin Central from
Menasha to Stevens Point. Reed's colleagues included Menasha civic leader (and his brother) Curtis Reed and Matt Wadleigh, a lumber man from Stevens Point. They had the right to the land grant, but it paid only after track was built, so they needed money to get the project rolling. Judge Reed went east looking for financing.

Gardner Colby of Boston had worked his way up from store clerk to store owner to importer, then bought a textile mill and made his fortune selling clothing to the Union Army during the Civil War. Interested in Wisconsin timber and iron ore, he could arrange the financing that Judge Reed's group needed. But Colby didn't know anything about building a railroad. So he brought in Elijah B. Phillips, president of the Lake Shore and Northern Indiana Railway.

With financial backing secured, Judge Reed went back to Wisconsin to lay more groundwork. He had a civil engineer plan and estimate the first portion of the proposed railroad. That stretch from Menasha to Stevens Point was already somewhat settled, and Reed traveled up and down it raising support from the young towns that stood to profit from a rail connection. The arrangement with Colby was that locally raised money would buy the
right of way, clear and grade it, put in culverts and bridges, and provide ties. Then Colby and his associates would provide the rails, stations, and all the equipment to run a railroad. Reed persuaded Menasha, Neenah and Waupaca to each give $50,000 to the project, Stevens Point $30,000, Ashland $20,000, and other towns smaller amounts.

Construction began June 15, 1871 in West Menasha. Reuben Scott of Menasha oversaw this first 63-mile leg to Stevens Point. Two subcontractors cleared and graded the roadbed, employing as many as 2000 men, 600 horses, and 100 yoke of oxen. Other contractors built bridges, culverts and trestles. The largest such project was the 200-foot bridge across the
Wolf River at Gills Landing, with a half mile of trestle approaches. The road bed was formed 16 feet wide at the top, with 9-foot hand-hewn cross ties. Then the steel rails were laid. Given equipment at that time, they made remarkable progress, averaging a mile per day. By October two trains were running daily to Waupaca, and the first train steamed into Stevens Point November 15, an occasion for celebration there. Governor Taylor and other dignitaries rode the new railroad late in the year and were impressed with its smoothness.

The second construction season in 1872 went pretty well too, though it was a different operation. Beyond Stevens Point the route passed through a wilderness of forests and swamps, with occasional camps of Indians, timber cruisers, and pioneer settlers. This time the Hooper, Boyle and Seymour Construction Company organized the road-building work, beginning March 18. At the
Wisconsin River just west of Point, a bridge-building contractor constructed a three-span Howe truss railroad bridge. The railroad also established its operating headquarters in Point, building a six-stall roundhouse and shops there. By September the rails had reached fifty-one miles northwest of Stevens Point, to a place initially called "Section 53." Shortly they named the station Colby, in honor of Gardner Colby's son Charles, a director of the Wisconsin Central and a partner in Phillips and Colby Construction Company. Beyond Colby, they had cleared the roadbed to "Mile Post 101," which would later be renamed Worcester, just south of modern Phillips.

In April of the same year, construction began south from Ashland. The railroad had originally planned for
Bayfield, an existing town, to be the terminal on Lake Superior, but then decided Ashland was more suitable. In 1870, when the railroad's civil engineer surveyed Ashland, its population was 5. With news of the railroad's plans, businesses poured in. The Bayfield Press described it as "the Future Iron City of Lake Superior." In 1872 the Wisconsin Central built its dock at Ashland. The general contractor on this stretch was Stoughton Brothers of Winona and supplies had to be shipped in through the Soo Locks to the new dock in Ashland, then up the track as it was built. By late 1872 over a thousand men were working on this northern segment. Progress was slow, and by winter the line had progressed only six miles, to White River where the contractors and the Chicago Bridge Company built a huge bridge 1600 feet long and 110 feet above the water in the ravine below.

Then things came to a halt. One December morning, word came to stop all work on the northern section of the railroad. The Wisconsin Central must have been short on cash. Captain Rich was in charge of this northern division of the railroad and his orders were to pay off the workers and help transport anyone who wanted to leave. Remember: it's December; Lake Superior is freezing over so boats aren't running; there are no railroads or highways out of Ashland yet; the only way out for these men is to walk 80 miles of trails to Superior; there are 1000 men. They were not happy. After some days, when Rich, the pay-master and guards arrived at a place called Kelly's camp to settle up, the workers demanded pay up to that day, instead of the day work was stopped. When Rich refused, the men tried to take the money. Rich pulled his revolver to hold the men back. Then he and his men jumped into their wagon and fled for Ashland, with angry workers in pursuit. Ashland shut down its saloons as the workers arrived to try to keep things under control. The city ended up calling in the Bayfield
militia, which marched across the bay on the ice and put Ashland under martial law for ten days. Then the workers were paid and the militia escorted over 1000 men out of Ashland, to walk the 80 miles to Superior, in January. This episode came to be called "the Ashland War."

At the southern construction camp, the year didn't end much better. When work was suspended, the workers waited in the camp at Colby two weeks without pay. Finally, 900 frustrated men commandeered a train and rode it down to Stevens Point, where they smeared tar on the Wisconsin Central's new bridge across the Wisconsin River, and threatened to burn it if they weren't paid. The railroad paid.

By next spring, in early 1873, the railroad had scraped together enough money to resume construction. That year another 24 miles of track was completed south of Ashland, to a place called Penokee Gap, including another huge bridge near the place still called
HighBridge. From the south rails were laid from Colby north to Worcester, just south of modern Phillips. Then, with 194 miles of track built, construction stopped again, leaving a 57-mile stretch of wilderness blocking the way to Lake Superior and the land grant money. This time construction didn't resume for three years.

This delay was due largely to the
Panic of 1873, an economic crisis which was called "the Great Depression" in the U.S. until the depression of the 1930s took over that name. One of the causes of this economic slump in 1873 was speculation on railroads. Recall that the Wisconsin Central received financial support from towns like Menasha and Stevens Point? By this time they had spent that money, and with the nationwide economic slump, financier Gardner Colby was having trouble raising more money from his investors. They were already behind on payments to subcontractors and for that reason in 1874 the construction contractor on the south end quit.

The Wisconsin Central's existence as an independent carrier was short-lived. Much of the Wisconsin Central right of way was built over land obtained through a Federal land-grant. It was the only land-grant railroad in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Central Railway's tracks reached
Ashland in 1877, St. Paul in 1884, Chicago in 1886 and Superior in 1908. The line was leased from 1889-1893 by the Northern Pacific Railroad. The lease was terminated when the Northern Pacific declared bankruptcy during the Panic of 1893.

While under the control of the
Northern Pacific, the Wisconsin Central Railroad constructed Solon Spencer Beman's great Romanesque Grand Central Station (Chicago) in 1889 as its southern terminus. When the Northern Pacific defaulted on its lease terms in 1893, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad acquired the several Chicago properties of the Wisconsin Central including Grand Central Station.

Wisconson_Central_Railway_1883_ad_cropped.jpg



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Central_Railroad_(1871–99)

The US Wisconsin Central Railway Company was created in 1897 when the
Wisconsin Central Railroad (1871–99) was reorganized from bankruptcy. In 1954, the name went back to Wisconsin Central Railroad Company. The railroad was merged into the Soo Line Railroad in 1961.

After a proposed merger with the Northern Pacific fell through in 1908, the Wisconsin Central was leased by the
Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway, commonly known as the Soo Line, in 1908. Controlling interest in the Soo Line (along with the Wisconsin Central) was held by the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The Wisconsin Central entered receivership in 1932, declared bankruptcy in 1944, and finally re-emerged from administration in 1954 as the Wisconsin Central Railroad. The Wisconsin Central was entirely merged into the new Soo Line Railroad in 1961.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Central_Railway_(1897–1954)

Wisconsin Central Ltd. (
reporting mark WC) is a railroad subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway. At one time, its parent Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation owned or operated railroads in the United States, Canada (Algoma Central Railway), the United Kingdom (English Welsh & Scottish), New Zealand (Tranz Rail), and Australia (Australian Transport Network).

Wisconsin Central Ltd. (WC) started in US in the mid-1980s using most of the original
Wisconsin Central Railway's rights of way and some former Milwaukee Road rights of way after the Soo Line Railroad acquired the Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Minnesota holdings of the bankrupt Milwaukee Road and divested its older railway trackage in Wisconsin. In 1993 the Wisconsin Central also acquired the Green Bay and Western Railroad and the Fox River Valley Railroad.

In 1995, Wisconsin Central acquired the 322-mile (518 km) Canadian
Algoma Central Railway whose tracks ran north of Sault Saint Marie to Hearst, Ontario. The Algoma Central runs a popular tourist passenger train through the Agawa Canyon and Agawa Canyon Wilderness Park near Lake Superior Provincial Park.

In 2001, the Wisconsin Central was purchased by the
Canadian National Railway. Along with the former Illinois Central Railroad, the former Wisconsin Central became part of Canadian National's United States holdings and its property integrated into the CN system.

At the time of its sale to
Canadian National, Wisconsin Central operated over 2,850 miles (4,590 km) of track in the Great Lakes region. The railroad extended from Chicago into and through Wisconsin to Minneapolis/St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota, to Sault Ste Marie, Michigan, and north (through the Algoma Central Railway) to Hearst, Ontario.

Wisconsin_Central_1998_map.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Central_Ltd.
2208

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
To add to posts #1, 11, 87...

CSX
Can't Stop Xeroxing
Carrying Several Xylophones
Charred Sizzled and X-Rayed
Chessie Still eXperimenting
Color Scheme Excitement
Conrail Screwed Xtremely
Conrail's Southern eXtension
Crashed, Smashed & eXploded
Creepin' Slow Xpress
Cut Scrap and here's the scissors to do it with
Cut and Scrap Xperts

CSX Transportation was formed on November 1, 1980, by combining the railroads of the former Chessie System with Seaboard Coast Line Industries, and finally with the Seaboard System Railroad in 1986. The originator of the Seaboard System was the former Seaboard Air Line Railroad, which previously merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1967, and later with the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, as well as several smaller subsidiaries such as the Clinchfield Railroad, Atlanta & West Point Railroad, Monon Railroad and the Georgia Railroad. The origin of the Chessie System was the former Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, which had merged with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and the Western Maryland Railway. Despite the merger in 1980, CSX Transportation never had its own identity (meaning no CSX painted locomotives or rolling stock) as a common carrier railroad until 1986


The name came about during merger talks between
Chessie System, Inc. and Seaboard System Railroad, Inc., commonly called "Chessie" and "Seaboard". The company chairmen said it was important for the new name to include neither of those names because it was a partnership. Employees were asked for suggestions, most of which consisted of combinations of the initials. At the same time a temporary shorthand name was needed for discussions with the Interstate Commerce Commission. "CSC" was chosen but belonged to a trucking company in Virginia. "CSM" (for "Chessie-Seaboard Merger") was also taken. The lawyers decided to use "CSX", and the name stuck. In the public announcement, it was said that "CSX is singularly appropriate. C can stand for Chessie, S for Seaboard, and X, which actually has no meaning." However, an August 9, 2016, article on the Railway Age website stated that " ... the 'X' was for 'Consolidated' ". The T had to be added to CSX when used as a reporting mark because reporting marks that end in X means that the car is owned by a leasing company or private car owner. The company introduced its current slogan, "How Tomorrow Moves", in 2008.


Conrail Acquisition

On June 23, 1997, CSX and
Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) filed a joint application with the Surface Transportation Board for authority to purchase, divide, and operate the assets of the 11,000-mile (18,000 km) Conrail, which had been created in 1976 by bringing together several ailing Northeastern railway systems into a government-owned corporation. On June 6, 1998, the STB approved the CSX–NS application and set August 22, 1998, as the effective date of its decision. CSX acquired 42 percent of Conrail's assets, and NS received the remaining 58 percent. As a result of the transaction, CSX's rail operations grew to include some 3,800 miles (6,100 km) of the Conrail system (predominantly lines that had belonged to the former New York Central Railroad). CSX began operating its trains on its portion of the Conrail network on June 1, 1999. CSX now serves much of the Eastern United States, with a few routes into nearby Canadian cities.


CSX_Transportation_system_map.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_Transportation
2305

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
C H & D
Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton
Charges High and D**n Rough Riding
Cheap Help and D**ned Poor Management
Cold, Hungry and Dirty
Crashed, Hungry, and Decomposing

The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad (CH&D) was a railroad based in the U.S. state of Ohio that existed between its incorporation on March 2, 1846, and its acquisition by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in December 1917. It was originally chartered to build from Cincinnati to Hamilton, Ohio, and then to Dayton, a distance of 59 mi (95 km); further construction and acquisition extended the railroad, and by 1902 it owned or controlled 640 mi (1,030 km) of railroad.

The original CH&D was founded by John Alexander Collins, who was born on June 8, 1815 in Staffordshire, England. He came to the US as a child in 1825, and worked as a locomotive engineer until moving to Ohio in 1851 to open the CH&D. Collins remained with the line until 1872, six years before his death in
Covington, Kentucky. Collins is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, where his tombstone details his life and its work.

On May 1, 1863, the CH&D leased the
Dayton and Michigan Railroad in perpetuity. In 1891, it acquired the Cincinnati, Dayton and Chicago Railroad, while in March of that year it added the Cincinnati, Dayton and Ironton Railroad.

In 1886 the CH&D was among the railroads controlled by the financial speculator
Henry S. Ives before his spectacular collapse the following year.

The Detroit and Michigan was the second railroad to reach Lima, Ohio, reaching there in 1858. By 1880, they had established a significant shop facility on the north side of town with over two hundred employees. The Detroit and Michigan had a freight depot west of the tracks and south of East North Street, between North Central Avenue (once Tanner Street) and North Jackson Street. Successor CH&D built a larger structure on the site, which continued to be used by the Baltimore and Ohio at least into the 1950s. The passenger depot followed a similar pattern, but was located farther north, between East Wayne Street and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati,_Hamilton_and_Dayton_Railway_(1846–1917)


1897_Poor's_Cincinnati,_Hamilton_and_Dayton_Railway.jpg


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/1897_Poor's_Cincinnati,_Hamilton_and_Dayton_Railway.jpg
2398

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
H T & W
Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington
Halibut Tuna and Whale
Hog Tied and Weary
Hoot Toot and Whistle
Hot Tea and Whiskey

The Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad was an interstate railroad in southwestern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts. It ran from the Hoosac Tunnel in Massachusetts to Wilmington, Vermont, a distance of approximately 25 miles (40 km).

The legislatures of Vermont and Massachusetts granted a charter to construct the
Deerfield Valley Railroad in 1884, and a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railroad was constructed over the 11 miles (18 km) from Hoosac Tunnel to Readsboro, Vermont by 1885. In 1886 control of the trackage in Massachusetts was transferred to the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad. However, the final 14 miles (23 km) of track to Wilmington were not laid until 1892, when control of the entire line was transferred to the HT&W.

In 1913 the line was
converted to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge, though an array of over 40 miles (64 km) of logging railroads that were laid at various times near Wilmington and Readsboro remained narrow gauge. The railroad was used to haul materials for the Somerset Dam in 1911, and the Harriman Dam in 1924, both of which were owned by the New England Power Company, which purchased the railroad in 1920. Originally the power company did not want to relocate the portion of the railroad flooded by the Harriman Dam, but was forced to by the citizens of Wilmington. The power company sold the railroad to local investors in 1928, who operated the railroad until a major flood in 1936 destroyed a bridge near Mountain Mills in Vermont. The railroad was sold again at that time, and the portion north of Readsboro was abandoned in 1937. Operations continued on the remaining portion until 1971, when the line was finally abandoned.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoosac_Tunnel_and_Wilmington_Railroad

htw-map1.jpg


http://vizettes.com/kt/htw/maps/htw-map1.jpg

htw-map2.jpg


http://vizettes.com/kt/htw/maps/htw-map2.jpg
2551

Cheers,
USS ALASKA

 
C G W
Chicago Great Western
Can Grow Weeds
Can't Get Worse
Can't Go West
Chicago Great Weedy
Chicago and Great Weaties
Cinders Grass and Weeds
The Great Wheaty
Chicago Great Nothing

The Chicago Great Western Railway (
reporting mark CGW) was a Class I railroad that linked Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, and Kansas City. It was founded by Alpheus Beede Stickney in 1885 as a regional line between St. Paul and the Iowa state line called the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad. Through mergers and new construction, the railroad, named Chicago Great Western after 1892, quickly became a multi-state carrier. One of the last Class I railroads to be built, it competed against several other more well-established railroads in the same territory, and developed a corporate culture of innovation and efficiency to survive.

Nicknamed the Corn Belt Route because of its operating area in the
midwestern United States, the railroad was sometimes called the Lucky Strike Road, due to the similarity in design between the herald of the CGW and the logo used for Lucky Strike cigarettes.

In 1968 it merged with the
Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), which abandoned most of the CGW's trackage.


In 1835, the Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Airline railroad was chartered with the intent of building a railroad west out of Chicago. The railroad never began construction, and its rights to build were transferred in 1854 to a new company, the Minnesota & North Western (M&NW), which eventually began construction in 1884 of a line south from St. Paul, Minnesota to Dubuque, Iowa. In 1887, the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City Railroad acquired the M&NW, and by the end of the decade, under the leadership of St. Paul businessman A. B. Stickney, it had established routes west to Omaha, Nebraska, south to St. Joseph, Missouri, and east to Chicago, Illinois, via the Winston Tunnel near Dubuque. In 1892, the railroad was reorganized as the Chicago Great Western.


In 1907, the
panic of 1907 caused Stickney to lose control of the railroad, and ownership passed to financier J. P. Morgan. In 1910, the CGW introduced four McKeen Motor Car Company self-propelled railcars, its first rolling stock powered by internal combustion engines. In the same year, the railroad also purchased ten large 2-6-6-2s from the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Two years later, the railroad acquired an experimental battery powered motorcar from the Federal Storage Battery Car Company. In 1916, the railroad began standardizing on 2-8-2 steam locomotives, which served through the 1920. In 1923 CGW purchased from the soon to be dominant company EMC, two of EMD's first gasoline-powered cars. During the 1920s, as ownership changed again to the Bremo Corporation, a group of investors led by Patrick Joyce, an executive at the Standard Steel Car Company, the railroad expanded its use of self-propelled vehicles. At the end of the decade, 36 2-10-4 steam locomotives were purchased from Baldwin and the Lima Locomotive Works.

During the
Great Depression, the railroad trimmed operations by closing facilities and abandoning trackage. It purchased its first diesel-electric locomotive, an 800 horsepower (600 kW) yard switcher from Westinghouse, in 1934. In 1935, the CGW began trial operations of trailer on flatcar trains, which were expanded the following year into regular service, initially between Chicago and St. Paul, but rapidly expanding across the system by 1940. In 1941, it was reorganized in bankruptcy, and late in the decade a group of investors, organized as the Kansas City Group, purchased the CGW. In 1946, a demonstrator EMD F3 diesel locomotive set operated on the CGW, immediately prompting the company to purchase a wide variety of diesels, and by 1950 the railroad had converted completely to diesel motive power. In 1949, William N. Deramus III assumed the presidency, and began a program of rebuilding infrastructure and increasing efficiency, both by consolidating operations such as dispatching and accounting and by lengthening trains. In 1957, Deramus left the company, and Edward Reidy assumed the presidency.

As early as 1946, the first proposal was advanced to merge the Great Western with other railroads, this time with the
Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Upon the failure of a later merger opportunity with the Soo Line Railroad in 1963, the board of the Great Western grew increasingly anxious about its continued viability in a consolidating railroad market. Testifying before the Interstate Commerce Commission in Chicago, President Reidy claimed, "The simple fact is that there is just too much transportation available between the principal cities we serve. The Great Western cannot long survive as an independent carrier under these conditions." In 1965, the railroad ended passenger operations.

The CGW, therefore, was open to a merger with the
Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), first proposed in 1964. After a 4-year period of opposition by other competing railroads, on July 1, 1968, the Chicago Great Western merged with Chicago and North Western. At the time of the merger, the CGW operated a 1,411 miles (2,271 km) system, over which it transported 2,452 million ton-miles of freight in 1967, largely food and agricultural products, lumber, and chemicals, for $28.7 million of revenue. Upon taking control of the CGW, the CNW rapidly abandoned most of the former CGW trackage.

CGWMapCirca1897.jpg


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Great_Western_Railway
2629

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
W & OD
Washington and Old Dominion Railroad
Virginia Creeper

The Washington and Old Dominion Railroad (colloquially referred to as the W&OD), the successor to the bankrupt Washington and Old Dominion Railway, was an intrastate short-line railroad located in Northern Virginia. Its oldest line extended from Alexandria on the Potomac River northwest to Bluemont at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Snickers Gap, not far from the boundary line between Virginia and West Virginia. The railroad's route largely paralleled the routes of the Potomac River and the present Virginia State Route 7 (VA Route 7).

The line followed the winding course of
Four Mile Run upstream from Alexandria through Arlington to Falls Church. At that point, the railroad was above the Fall Line and was able to follow a more direct northwesterly course in Virginia through Dunn Loring, Vienna, Sunset Hills (now in Reston), Herndon, Sterling, Ashburn, Leesburg, Paeonian Springs, Hamilton, Purcellville and Round Hill to its terminus at Bluemont, turning sharply to the west only after passing through Clarks Gap in Catoctin Mountain west of Leesburg. A branch connected the line to Rosslyn. The Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Trail (W&OD Trail), the Bluemont Junction Trail, the Mount Jefferson Park and Greenway Trail, several other trails, Interstate 66 (I-66), and Old Dominion Drive (Virginia State Route 309) have replaced much of the railroad's route.

History
Predecessors of the Washington and Old Dominion Railway/Railroad
Originally incorporated as the Alexandria and
Harper's Ferry Railroad, construction on the line began in 1855 by the Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire (AL&H) Railroad under the presidency of Lewis McKenzie. First intended to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River to reach the coal fields in the western part of Hampshire County, Virginia, that are now within Mineral County, West Virginia, the AL&H began operating to Vienna in 1859 from a terminal station near Princess and Fairfax Streets in old town Alexandria. In 1860, the AL&H reached Leesburg in Loudoun County. Because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., the line saw much use and disruption during the Civil War. After the war, the name of the line was changed in 1870 to the Washington and Ohio Railroad. The line was extended from Leesburg to Hamilton in 1870 and to Round Hill in 1874.

Upon acquisition by new owners in the 1880s, the line's name was changed twice: first to the Washington and Western Railroad in 1882 and in the next year to the Washington, Ohio and Western (WO&W) Railroad. However, the line's trains did not serve either Washington,
Ohio, or the West.

In 1886, the
Richmond and Danville Railroad, whose trunk line travelled between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta with connections to New York City, New Orleans, Mississippi and Florida, leased the WO&W. The Richmond and Danville also acquired a branch that paralleled the WO&W while traveling between Manassas and Strasburg, Virginia, where it connected to railroads in the Shenandoah Valley west of the Blue Ridge that the WO&W did not reach. In 1888, the Richmond and Danville began to operate the WO&W's trains between Washington, D.C., and Round Hill.

In 1894, the newly formed
Southern Railway absorbed the Richmond and Danville Railroad and acquired the WO&W. In 1900, the Southern Railway extended the line westward for four miles from Round Hill to Bluemont (formerly Snickersville). The Southern Railway designated the line as its Bluemont Branch.

By 1908,
steam locomotives were hauling Southern Railway passenger trains from the new Union Station in Washington, D.C., to Alexandria Junction (north of old town Alexandria), where they switched to travel westward on the Bluemont Branch. Connecting trains shuttled passengers between Alexandria Junction and the former AL&H terminal in old town Alexandria. On weekends, express trains carried vacationers from Washington to Bluemont and other towns in western Loudoun County in which resorts had developed.

Meanwhile, in 1906,
electric trolleys had begun to run on the Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad (GF&OD) northwest to Great Falls from Georgetown in Washington, D.C. This line, which John Roll McLean and Stephen Benton Elkins owned at the time, crossed the Potomac River on the old Aqueduct Bridge, passed through Rosslyn, and traveled northwest on a double-tracked line through Arlington and Fairfax County to an amusement park (trolley park) that the railway constructed and operated near the falls.

In 1911, McLean and Elkins formed a new corporation, the Washington and Old Dominion Railway. In that year, they concluded negotiations with the Southern Railway to lease the Southern's Bluemont Branch and to take over all service on the branch on July 1, 1912. The lease excluded the portion of the Southern's route that connected
Potomac Yard with the former AL&H terminal in old town Alexandria.

In 1912, the GF&OD became the "Great Falls Division" of the W&OD Railway, while the Southern's Bluemont Branch became a part of the W&OD Railway's "Bluemont Division". The W&OD electrified all of its operations over the next four years, becoming an
interurban electric trolley system that carried passengers, mail, milk and freight. From that time onward, W&OD trains crossed over Potomac Yard on a long trestle constructed earlier for the Southern Railway. In contrast to the Southern Railway's earlier Bluemont Branch service, the W&OD Railway's Bluemont Division did not serve Washington's Union Station.

To join its two lines, the W&OD Railway constructed in 1912 a double-tracked Bluemont Division connecting line that traveled between two new
junctions in Arlington: Bluemont Junction on the Alexandria-Bluemont line and Thrifton Junction on the Georgetown-Great Falls line. The connecting line passed through Lacey (near the west end of Ballston), crossing on a through girder bridge over a competing interurban electric trolley line, the Fairfax line of the Washington-Virginia Railway (see Northern Virginia trolleys). The rival line carried passengers between Rosslyn, Clarendon, Ballston, Falls Church, Vienna and Fairfax City.

The
railway's electrification system distributed 650 volts direct current (DC) to its Bluemont Division cars and trains through overhead catenary lines. Single overhead lines carried the Great Falls Division's electricity over its tracks. Stationary and movable electrical substations containing Westinghouse alternating current (AC) to DC converters were located at various points along the railway's routes.

The W&OD's main passenger line ran from Georgetown and Rosslyn through Thrifton Junction, Bluemont Junction and westward to Bluemont. However, after crossing the Potomac River from Georgetown, many W&OD passengers transferred in Rosslyn to the trolleys of the competing Washington-Virginia Railway. Most of the W&OD's freight trains ran between Potomac Yard, Bluemont Junction and either Rosslyn or various locations along the Bluemont Division.

In 1923, the W&OD Railway ceased operating from Georgetown when the federal government replaced the aging Aqueduct Bridge with the new
Francis Scott Key Bridge. At the same time, the railroad constructed a new passenger station in Rosslyn which became its "Washington" terminal.

The W&OD Railway fell upon hard times in the 1930s during the
Great Depression. In 1932, the railway went into bankruptcy and was placed in receivership. In 1934, the railway abandoned operations on the Great Falls Division between Thrifton Junction and Great Falls. The abandoned railway route then became Old Dominion Drive. In 1979, the old rail trestle of the Great Falls Division over Difficult Run was demolished after years of carrying car traffic on Old Dominion Drive.

Washington and Old Dominion Railroad
In 1936, the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad, a new
corporation that Davis Elkins (the son of Stephen Benton Elkins) had created, assumed operation of the remnants of the W&OD Railway, which consisted only of the Railway's Bluemont Division and the portion of the former Great Falls Division that had remained between Rosslyn and Thrifton (which was no longer a junction). Shortly thereafter, in 1939, the railroad abandoned the western end of its line, which had connected the towns of Purcellville and Bluemont.

In 1945, the W&OD Railroad acquired ownership of the section of line between Potomac Yard and Purcellville that the W&OD Railway had earlier leased from the Southern Railway. The Southern Railway retained ownership of the easternmost section of the railroad's route, which still connected Potomac Yard to the Southern's freight and passenger stations in old town Alexandria.

During the 1940s, the W&OD Railroad converted all of its lines' operations from electric to
diesel or gasoline power. The railroad discontinued its electrified passenger service in 1941, but temporarily resumed passenger service during World War II using gas-electric motor cars and cars pulled by diesel-electric locomotives. Passenger and mail service finally ended in 1951; thereafter, the railroad carried only freight. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) purchased the W&OD Railroad in 1956, but did not change the railroad's name.

The 1960s were a decade of decline and closure for the W&OD. The
Virginia highway department began negotiations to purchase Rosslyn spur in 1960 and was trying to buy the mainline as early as 1962 for the construction of a road that was to become Interstate 66 (I-66). In July 1962, the highway department bought the Rosslyn Spur for $900,000. In September 1963, the railroad stopped operating to Rosslyn. The railroad removed its tracks between Lacey's Siding (south of Washington Boulevard Washington Boulevard) and Rosslyn by November 1964.

Abandonment
In February 1965, the Commonwealth of Virginia contracted to buy 30.5 miles (49.1 km) of the mainline from Herndon to Alexandria for $3.5 million. The C&O Railway then petitioned the
Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for permission to abandon the railroad's remnant. The purchase would eliminate the need to build a grade separation where the railroad crossed the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway, (now Interstate 395 (I-395)) at grade and at another grade separation for I-66. The purchase would also provide 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of right-of-way for I-66, saving the state $5 million.

The purchase was opposed by business interests in Loudoun County, the Arlington County Chamber of Commerce, various state, county and local officials, railway labor organizations and 21 of the 133 shippers who still used the freight service. The
Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVCC), which was interested in converting the line to a commuter rail service, also opposed the purchase. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which at the time was planning to construct a rapid transit system for the Washington area, tried to postpone the abandonment in the hopes of using part of the right-of-way for transit.

The highway department simultaneously made plans to secretly sell all but 4 miles (6.4 km) of the route to the Virginia Electric and Power Company (VEPCO) (now
Dominion Virginia Power), whose transmission lines had run along the railroad's right-of-way. As a result, the highway department would sell to VEPCO the remaining 17.5 miles (28.2 km) of right-of-way, including the 12 miles (19.3 km) north of Herndon. The sale would thus prevent the NVCC from buying the land for mass transit.

In August 1967, transit advocates led by Del.
Clive L. DuVal II (Fairfax-Falls Church) and WMATA secured a 60-day postponement of the abandonment while they put together a plan to use the right-of-way for transit. However, according to WMATA general manager Jackson Graham, the estimated cost of using the full right-of-way for commuter rail was $70 million. Because WMATA did not expect the proposed transit line to be able to generate enough ridership to be cost-effective, WMATA rejected that option.

On November 10, 1967, WMATA announced that it had come to an agreement with the highway department that would give WMATA a two- year option to buy a 5 miles (8.0 km) stretch of the right of way from Glebe Road (
Virginia Route 120) to the Capital Beltway (now Interstate 495 (I-495)), where I-66 was to be built, and to operate mass transit in the highway's median strip. WMATA would also have a 2-year option to buy the 10 miles (16.1 km) of right-of-way from the Beltway to Herndon for the use of commuter trains, an option that WMATA did not exercise. A last minute offer to buy the railroad at its salvage cost and keep it running that the railroad's customers made was rejected in 1967.

In 1968, the ICC decided to permit the C&O to abandon and sell its line. After initially planning to run their last train on January 30, 1968, a temporary restraining order kept the line open until early August 1968. By 1969, the C&O had removed all of its tracks and ties, except for some tracks that were crossing paved roads. In 1974, the railroad's bridge over the Capital Beltway was demolished to enable the highway to be widened.

Legacy
The Virginia highway department retained the section of the railroad's route that crossed the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway along the Arlington-Alexandria boundary and the portion of the route in Arlington immediately east of Falls Church, on which it built I-66. WMATA then constructed a part of
Washington Metro's Orange Line within the median strip of I-66 on that portion of the railroad's former route.

In 1977, VEPCO agreed to sell to the
Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NVRPA) for $3.6 million the portion of its right-of-way that lay west of the Alexandria/Arlington boundary. The NVRPA then incorporated that portion of the right-of-way into its Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park, within which it constructed the W&OD Trail. NVRPA completed the trail to Purcellville in 1988.

Bluemont Division, Alexandria-Bluemont Line
Most of the Bluemont Division's passenger cars or trains ran on the W&OD Railway's Great Falls Division's line from Georgetown over the Aqueduct Bridge through Rosslyn to Thrifton Junction. From Thrifton Junction, the trains ran on the Bluemont Division's connecting line to Bluemont Junction, where they met other Bluemont Division passenger cars or trains that ran from Alexandria, following Four Mile Run in Arlington. Some of the Bluemont Division cars or trains then continued their trips through Falls Church, Vienna, Herndon, Sterling, Ashburn, Leesburg, Clarkes Gap and Purcellville to terminate in Bluemont, Virginia, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, following a route that was similar to that of Virginia State Route 7.

After the W&OD Railroad closed, the Southern Railway and its successor, the
Norfolk Southern Railway, operated a spur between the Alexandria waterfront and a north-south route that traveled through Potomac Yard before the Yard closed in 1989. The spur formerly served trains traveling from the eastern end of the Bluemont Division to the Southern Railway's freight and passenger stations in old town Alexandria. As the Southern Railway owned and operated the spur and the stations, this section of track remained in operation after the W&OD closed. Railroad operations ended on the spur in 2012-2013 when GenOn Energy's Potomac River Generating Station and the Robinson Terminal's Oronoco Street warehouse closed.

A paved trail in Alexandria's linear Mt. Jefferson Park has replaced part of the Bluemont Division's course through that city. The Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority's W&OD Trail travels in the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad Regional Park within the Bluemont Division's former right-of-way from the Alexandria/Arlington boundary through Bluemont Junction to Purcellville. The section of the Bluemont Division between Purcellville and Bluemont has not become a part of any trail, as the W&OD Railroad abandoned this section in 1938, thirty years before the remainder of its line closed.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_and_Old_Dominion_Railroad

W&ODmap.JPG


http://r2parks.net/W&ODmap.JPG
2776

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
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