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presents

The Roads and Rails of Mercer County, WV /

Virginian Railway

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Say the words: "Virginian Railway." The name itself is enough to conjure romantic connotations in modelling and rail history circles: Visions of soaring grades, tunnels and trestles cutting through rugged terrain, and passenger trains linking central West Virginia to the Atlantic coast. Over sixty years after the railway in question ceased to exist, why does the Virginian endure?

Perhaps it was the company's relatively short life. The Virginian was a latecomer among railways: Its mainline wasn't completed until 1909, decades after most competition had done the brunt of their building. Its disappearance predated the "merger mania" that gripped American railroading in the late 20th century; thus, the name was left unsullied by memories of abandonment or late-period financial disaster. By now, the Virginian has been gone longer than it existed as an entity in the first place...but memories run deep.

Like its rival the N&W, the Virginian mainline had an eastern terminus in Norfolk, Virginia. It featured a very level and well-graded course through Roanoke and the New River Valley. After crossing into West Virginia at Glen Lyn, the line bore north, passing through Princeton and Mullens, West Virginia with a branch line to Beckley. Its northern terminus was in Deep Water, West Virginia, where a connection to the New York Central allowed the Virginian to offer through service to Charleston.

The Virginian Railway contributed greatly to the economic and social sphere in cities like Princeton, where it operated massive locomotive facilities and dominated the local discourse: Everyone either worked there, or was acquainted with someone who did. It was also a pioneer in electrification, with the entire mainline from Mullens to Roanoke being equipped with overhead wires in 1925.

In 1951, the Virginian made the proposal to discontinue its passenger service. An outcry erupted among the towns and cities served by its route, yet the company persevered in lobbying the WVPSC and VCC to let them do what they wanted to do. Service to Charleston was the first to be culled, and by 1955 the passenger trains from Roanoke to Page had made their final run. Four scant years later, the Virginian entered talks to be acquired by its old cross-town rival: The Norfolk & Western. The deal was approved, and in December 1959 the Virginian ceased to exist.

Considering that it was supposedly profitable from beginning to end, why was the Virginian so eager to get out of business in the 1950s? Perhaps the company's leadership sensed that the railway was in a more precarious financial state than it seemed. The Virginian had been founded and built to satisfy one objective: To transport coal. Its branch lines had been laid with the same objective: To transport coal. Any attempts that the railway made to diversify its business model were completely feeble due to sunk costs and constrained geography, and came to nought: Its freight remained 90% coal. Meanwhile, coal was on its way out: Employment peaked in the 1920s, and by the 1950s the industry was already on its way to obsolescence due to depleted seams and the emergence of cheaper energy sources. Without some way out, the Virginian was doomed. And the most obvious way out was to let itself be bought by a larger company with more diversified holdings.

Though large portions of the Virginian mainline remained in service under Norfolk & Western (and some continue under Norfolk Southern today), it was hardly a bloodless merger. Electrification was an early victim: The N&W removed it in 1962 under the dubious premise that diesel locomotives made it unnecessary, and virtually no visible trace remains of the infrastructure now. The N&W operated massive locomotive facilities in Bluefield, making the Virginian shops in Princeton redundant. Large portions of the Virginian mainline paralleled the N&W, leaving the combined railway with redundant trackage that was subsequently abandoned. And passenger service never did come back.

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Points of interest

Glen Lyn, Virginia

A: The Virginian mainline approached West Virginia from the north bank of the New River, entering at Glen Lyn, the same town that the rival Norfolk & Western system used as its access point to the state. The Virginian was built at a higher grade, however, and this necessitated a higher level of infrastructure than the N&W: The line carried itself across the river atop a four-pier bridge, followed by a rock cut and smaller but equally-high trestle over the East River.

Following the acquisition of the Virginian by the N&W in 1959, the combined company was left with redundant trackage. Meanwhile, plans were hatched under the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1964 to expand U.S. Highway 460 into a four-lane divided highway under guise of Corridor Q.

U.S. 460 paralleled the Virginian grade, and the confined topography of the New River valley meant that there were few ways to expand the highway without commandeering other infrastructure. The West Virginia State Road Commission and Virginia Department of Highways bought a portion of this right-of-way, and the majority of US 460's current course between Narrows, Virginia and Kellysville, West Virginia was built directly over the Virginian railway grade.

In Glen Lyn itself, the Virginian infrastructure was bypassed. The high bridges over the East and New River were dismantled in the early 1970s, leaving only the concrete footings and piers. Several photographs of the lost New River bridge are available on Industrial History.

Hales Gap

B: Another piece of lost Virginian infrastructure was the Hales Gap Tunnel, located at approximately 37.3589, -80.8874 west of Glen Lyn. The original course of U.S. 219 and U.S. 460 passed directly over the tunnel while straddling the railway to either side.

When the highway was expanded under Corridor Q in the early 1970s, the tunnel and railway grade were vacated, filled, and obliterated by new construction. No visible above-ground traces of the Hales Gap Tunnel remain, though it's vaguely possible that portions of its structure still exist underneath the present-day road surface.

Kellysville

Three kilometres southwest of Hales Gap, U.S. 460 Corridor Q bears away from the historical Virginian right-of-way, and intact rails resume. Yet, this isn't the end of surprises along the line...

C: Railway companies can make shortsighted mistakes. Shortly after acquiring the Virginian in 1959, the N&W installed a crossover track and bridge enabling freight to be shifted between the east portion of the Virginian line and the west portion of the N&W (blue arrow). Less than a decade later, the east portion of the Virginian right-of-way had been sold and dismantled...making the crossover useless! A second crossover track and bridge then had to be constructed (orange arrow), funneling trains from the west portion of the Virginian to the east portion of the N&W.

D: In addition to being the site of the crossover, Kellysville had a status as the first significant railway stop encountered by Virginian trains in West Virginia. The "town" consisted of a dozen houses straddling a valley perpendicular to the track. Much of this was obliterated by landfill caused by Corridor Q construction in the 1970s, leaving "Kellysville" as nothing more than an artifact title on the map.

Oakvale

E: This Norfolk and Western caboose sits underneath the elevated trestle of the Virginian in Oakvale, which carries the line over 20 metres above a tributary of the East River. (Photo by the author, 2000.)

Even though the Virginian grazed Oakvale's town limits, the town would have been impractical as a station because of the elevation separating it from the railway. Most likely, Virginian management considered it sufficient to serve this community from their siding in Kellysville instead.

Stengel

F: Located halfway up the face of Divide Ridge with no connecting vehicular roads, Stengel had little purpose other than as a siding allowing trains from opposite directions to pass. By the 1960s, it had vanished from maps.

West of Stengel, the Virginian mainline maintains its elevation and passes through five tunnels in succession (blue arrows). Soaring trestles carry the track over Harmon Branch, Rocky Hollow, and an ephemeral stream north of Ingleside.

Given how the Virginian's construction happened at a back-breaking rate, through extremely rugged terrain, within a veritable two-year eyeblink of time (1907 to 1909) and predating modern safety regulations and workers' rights, it's difficult to contemplate its spectacular infrastructure without also ruminating on its real human cost. How many fatalities and injuries happened as these bridges were built and tunnels blasted through the West Virginia bedrock? Unfortunately, this information is not well known. As breathtaking as the Virginian is, it goes without saying that it also had a dark side.

Princeton

G: After passing through one more tunnel at Oney Gap, the Virginian emerges from the hills in Princeton...one of the most important cities on the line.

Princeton predated the railway by an order of magnitude. It existed as a tangible community as early as the 1830s, and earned a reprehensible reputation as a hotbed of Confederate sympathy in the years during and immediately after the Civil War. Though the Virginian Railway couldn't atone for the sins of the city's past, it did at least give it a new premise for being. Because of its relatively flat terrain, Princeton was an ideal location for the Virginian Railway's classification yard, locomotive shops, and divisional headquarters...some of which would endure under N&W until well into the late twentieth century. It also formed the location of several industries serviced by spurs along the line.

Looking south over the Virginian tracks in the year 2000, one saw a rather sleepy, quiet scene. The yard consisted of four tracks...a far cry from the 1950s when there were as many as eighteen. To the right was the site of the Princeton passenger depot; the building had been demolished by the 1980s, but its foundation was still visible. (Photo by the author, 2000.)

The Virginian railway shops laid to the north. Some portions of the original facility had already been torn down by this point, but what remained included the locomotive erecting shop (with its distinctive sawtooth roof), repair shops, freight shed, office, and storage buildings. The erecting shop was demolished in 2006. (Photo by the author, 2000.)

As of 2023, the shop premises have been occupied by Recycle WV.

H: Near the shop premises, a 700-metre spur line split off to the east to serve industrial businesses such as Virginian Supply, Pioneer Coal, and the Snider Flour Mill. By the early 2000s, the industrial site had been completely razed, the spur abandoned, and the bridge carrying it over Brush Creek dismantled. Nevertheless, an old 45-degree N&W crossbuck sign continued to stand guard over the remnants of the sole grade crossing; though it too soon disappeared. (Photo by the author, 2000.)

In 2006, Princeton's railway legacy got a shot in the arm with the opening of the new Princeton Railroad Museum, housed in a replica of the original Virginian depot. Among the museum's holdings are an original Virginian caboose, built in 1948. Alas, I didn't get to see much more than this, since I got there on the one day of the week the doors were closed. (Photos by the author, 2013.)

The museum's artifacts on display include an early railroad crossing advance warning sign, and a semaphore mast. I'm not entirely sure if these exact items had been used by the Virginian Railway seventy or eighty years earlier, but they may well have been. (Photos by the author, 2013.)

Gardner Junction

I: North of Princeton, the line parallelled Brush Creek through its first major junction: Gardner Junction, where a branch line served the lumber industry in the Bluestone River watershed to the north.

The Bluestone Lumber branch was short-lived, and disappeared from maps by the 1920s. In the 1930s, the grading was repurposed for a vehicular road.

North of the former junction, the line narrows to a single track. Most of the telegraph poles alongside are still intact, although the wires between them are not. (Photo by the author, 2013.)

Kegley

J: After passing through a difficult-to-access tunnel, the railway bears southwest towards the Bluestone River over the Kegley Trestle. The trestle measures approximately 40 metres tall, characteristic of the soaring infrastructure that defined the Virginian in higher-elevation terrain.

K: Kegley per se is just beyond, and was the site of a siding. It's unknown whether any tangible industries operated here, or whether the station simply served as a passing and watering point for trains approaching Princeton.

Kale

L: Kale was the Virginian's first stop on the Bluestone River, and was more a control point than a tangible community. It first appeared on maps by 1926.

Rock

M: Rock was typical of the towns in turn-of-the-century Appalachia that punched above their weight, since they functioned as service areas for a vast rural hinterland. The town traces back to the 1850s and was served by a school, a post office, multiple merchandise stores, a power plant, and two railways: The Virginian and N&W, each of which had a siding and station of their own. Indeed: Rock was the point at which the Virginian line and the N&W's now-bygone Bluestone branch converged towards Widemouth Creek, though the two passed at different elevations and did not interface.

The Virginian crosses WV 71, the Bluestone River, and the overgrown N&W Bluestone branch via a plate girder bridge. While this is less spectacular than some of the railway's other spans in Mercer County, it demonstrates the elevation difference that the Virginian maintains through most of its parallel routing to the N&W, and may be original to original construction in 1908.

Matoaka

N: In its approach to Matoaka, the Virginian mainline passes through a small tunnel easily seen from the highway. Though difficult to make out, the portal bears the year "1914" and a small "Matoaka" sign indicating the station ahead. Also note how the telegraph poles are routed on the hillside above. (Photo by the author, 2013.)

O: Matoaka was a quintessential railroad town, and second only to Princeton as the Virginian's most important stop in Mercer County. The Virginian and N&W lines interfaced here, allowing freight transfer. It existed as an incorporated entity from 1912 to 2018.

Giatto, Weyanoke, and Lowe

P: We're now solidly in mining country...an inhospitable landscape where numerous company towns sprouted like dandelions to exploit workers and pull hunks of black carbon out of the ground for a quick buck. Giatto practically abuts Matoaka on the map and was followed in the Widemouth Creek watershed by Lowe, both of which existed in thrall to the Weyanoke Coal & Coke Company.

In between Giatto and Lowe laid the residential community (and company namesake) of Weyanoke...which is strangely absent from many maps. Lowe vanished from maps by the 1950s; its buildings demolished, its surrounding landscape stripped raw. What justified the separation of names? Possibly, it was segregation. Mercer County was hardly a bastion of racial justice in the early to mid twentieth century, and it's indisputable that numerous coal camps in the state were split along perceived colour lines much as schools were.

Lamar

Q: Many a coal town wasn't even allowed a shred of identity beyond that which the company gave it. Algonquin was typical for the course: Founded and named in the teens by the Algonquin Coal & Coke Company, the community was later sold wholesale to Lamar Colliery, who renamed it after themselves. Mining activity ceased in the 1950s, and by 1967 most of the buildings were gone.

Lamar represents the highest-elevation point on the Virginian line, as well as the point at which the N&W's parallel branch line petered out, giving the Virginian full control of further freight. Just beyond, the mainline disappears through the Clark Gap tunnel separating Mercer from Wyoming County. It continues north to Deep Water in Fayette County, where it interfaced with the New York Central line.

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