| |
 | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Richmond, Virginia |
| Locale | Virginia |
| Dates of operation | 1836–1878 |
| Successor | Chesapeake and Ohio Railway |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in)[1] |
| Length | 206 miles (332 km)[2] |
The Virginia Central Railroad was an early railroad in the U.S. state of Virginia that operated between 1850 and 1868 from Richmond westward for 206 miles (332 km) to Covington. Chartered in 1836 as the Louisa Railroad by the Virginia General Assembly, the railroad began near the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad's line and expanded westward to Orange County, reaching Gordonsville by 1840. In 1849, the Blue Ridge Railroad was chartered to construct a line over the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Louisa Railroad which reached the base of the Blue Ridge in 1852. After a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Louisa Railroad was allowed to expand eastward from a point near Doswell to Richmond.
Renamed as the Virginia Central Railroad in 1850, the railroad bypassed the under construction Blue Ridge Railroad via a temporary track built over Rockfish Gap. This connected the railroad's eastern division with its expanding line across the Blue Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley. Having reached Clifton Forge by 1857, the railroad began operating the completed Blue Ridge Railroad in 1858 and continued preparing for further expansion until the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861. As a prime target for Federal raids by Union Cavalry, the railroad faced significant action against it during the war. Although the war left the railroad with only a fraction of its line left operable, the railroad was running over its entire pre-war length by July 1865.
After the war, both longtime president Edmund Fontaine and former Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham served as president of the Virginia Central and oversaw its expansion towards Covington. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was formed in 1868 from the merger of the Virginia Central Railroad and the Covington and Ohio Railroad, and had expanded westward to the Ohio River by 1873 after new financing from Collis P. Huntington was recruited. The new railroad (reorganized as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1878) expanded eastward in the 1880s via the Peninsula Subdivision to Newport News. The Chesapeake and Ohio operated for over one hundred years until it was reorganized through merger as CSX Transportation in the 1980s. Today, CSX, Amtrak, and the Buckingham Branch Railroad still use portions of the old Virginia Central line for freight and passenger rail service.
- ^ Majewski 2000, p. 134.
- ^ Homans 1856, p. 73.