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The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway traces its origin to the Louisa Railroad of
Louisa County, Virginia, begun in 1836,
and the James River & Kanawha Canal
Company begun 1785, also in Virginia. The C&O of the 1950s and 1960s at its
height before the first modern merger, was the product of about 150 smaller
lines that had been incorporated into the system over time.
By 1850 the Louisa Railroad had been built east to Richmond and west to
Charlottesville,
and in keeping with its new and larger vision, was renamed
Virginia Central. The Commonwealth of Virginia,
always keen to help with "internal improvements" not only owned a portion of
Virginia Central stock, but incorporated
and financed the
Blue Ridge Railroad to accomplish the hard and expensive task of crossing
the first mountain barrier
to the west. Under the leadership of the great early
civil engineer Claudius Crozet, the Blue Ridge Railroad
built over the mountain, using four tunnels, including the 4,263-foot Blue Ridge Tunnel at the top of the
mountain,
then one of the longest tunnels in the world.
While the Blue Ridge Railroad attacked the mountains, Virginia Central was
building westward from the west foot of the mountains.
It crossed the Great
Valley of Virginia, The Shenandoah, and the Shenandoah range Great North
Mountain,
reaching a point known as Jackson's River Station at the foot of
Alleghany Mountain in 1856.
This is the site that would later 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 & Ohio.
This company completed
important grading work on the Alleghany grade and did
considerable work on numerous tunnels over the mountain
and westward. It also
did a good deal of roadbed work around Charleston on the Kanawha River.
Then the
War Between the States intervened, and work was stopped on the westward
expansion.
During the Civil War the Virginia Central was one of the Confederacy's most
important lines, carrying food from t
he Shenandoah region to Richmond, and
ferrying troops and supplies back and forth as the campaigns frequently
surrounded
its tracks. On more than one occasion it 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
of track still in operation, and $40 in gold in its treasury.
Following the war, Virginia Central officials 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 getting Collis P. Huntington of New York interested in the line. He is, of
course,
the same Huntington that was one of the "big Four" involved in building
the Central Pacific portion of the
Transcontinental Railroad, which was at this
time just reaching completion. Huntington had a vision of a
true
transcontinental 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 the
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad in keeping with its new mission of linking the
Tidewater
coast of Virginia with the "Western Waters" of the Ohio River. 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 from Jackson's River Station to
the town of Covington,
seat of Alleghany County, Virginia. 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 the new city of Huntington on the Ohio River and
White Sulphur much as the UP and CP had
done in the transcontinental work, and
the line was joined at Hawks Nest, WV on January 28, 1873.
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 River. Over the next
few years he 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 Depression of 1873, and
went into
receivership in 1878. When reorganized it was renamed The
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company.
During the ten years 1878-1888 C&O's coal resources began to be developed and
shipped eastward.
In 1881 the Peninsula Subdivision was completed from Richmond
to the new city of Newport News
located on Hampton Roads, the East's largest
ice-free port. Transportation of coal to Newport News
where it was loaded on
coastwise shipping and transported to the Northeast became a staple
of the C&O's
business at this time.
In 1888 Huntington lost control of the C&O. A reorganization without foreclosure
resulted
in his losing his majority interest to the Morgan and Vanderbilt
interests, which installed Melville E. Ingalls
as President. Ingalls was, at the
time, President of the Vanderbilt's Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati & Louisville,
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 & Alleghany Railroad, which had been built along the
tow-path of the defunct
James River & 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. This "James River Line"
remains the principal artery of
coal transportation 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 down the South
bank of the Ohio River 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 line 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 & Michigan and Hocking
valley 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
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 haul trains
from Kenova, WV 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.
to Sciotoville, Ohio, on the great Limeville or Sciotoville bridge which remains
today the mightiest bridge every built
from point of view of its load capacity.
Truly a monument to engineering, but seldom commented on outside
engineering
circles because of its relatively remote location.
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.
The next great change for C&O came in 1923 when the great Cleveland
financiers, the brother 0. P.
and M. J. Van Sweringen, bought controlling
interest in the line as part of their expansion of the Nickel Plate Road NKP
system. Eventually they controlled the NKP, C&O, Pere Marquette Railway in
Michigan and Ontario, and Erie Railroads.
They managed to control this huge
system by a maze of holding companies and interlocking directorships. This house
of cards
tumbled when the Great Depression began and the Van Sweringen companies
collapsed. But the C&O was a strong line and
despite the fact that in the early
1930s over 50% of American railroads went into receivership, it not only avoided
bankruptcy, but took the occasion of cheap labor and materials to again
completely rebuild itself.
During the early 1930s when it seemed the whole country was retrenching, C&O
was boring new tunnels, adding double track,
rebuilding bridges, upgrading the
weight of its rail, and rebuilding its roadbed, all with money from its
principal commodity
of haulage: Coal. Even in the hard years of the Depression
coal was something that had to be used everywhere,
and C&O was sitting astride
the best bituminous seams in the country.
Because of this great upgrading and building program, C&O was in prime
condition to carry the monumental loads
needed during World War II. During the
War it transported men and materiel in unimagined quantities as the United
States
used the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation as a principal departure point
for the European Theater. The invasion of
North Africa was loaded here. Of
course coal was needed in ever increasing quantities by war industries, and C&O
was ready with a powerful, well organized, well maintained railway powered by
the largest and most modern locomotives.
By the end of the war C&O was poised to help America during its great growth
during
the decades following, and at mid-century was truly a line of national
importance. It became
more so, at least in the public's eye through Robert R.
Young, its mercurial Chairman.
Young got control of the C&O through the remnants of the Van Sweringen
companies in 1942, and for the
next decade he became "the gadfly of the rails,"
as he challenged old methods of financing and operating railroads,
and
inaugurated many forward looking advances in technology that have ramifications
to the present. He changed the C&O's
herald or logo to "C&O for Progress" to
embody his ideas that C&O would lead the industry to a new day. He installed
a
well-staffed research and development department that came up with ideas for
passenger service that are thought
to be futuristic even now, and for freight
service that would challenge the growth of trucking. Young eventually gave
up
his C&O position to become Chairman of the New York Central before his untimely
death in 1958.
During the Young era and following, C&O was headed by Walter J. Tuohy, under
whose control the "For Progress"
theme continued, though in a more muted way
after the departure of Young. During this time C&O installed the first
large
computer system in railroading, developed larger and better freight cars of all
types, switched reluctantly from
steamto diesel motive power, and diversified
its traffic, which had already occurred in 1947 when it merged into the
system
the old Pere Marquette Railway of Michigan and Ontario which had been controlled
since Van Sweringen days.
The PM's huge automotive industry traffic, taking raw
materials in and finished vehicles out, gave C&O some protection
from the swings
in the coal trade, putting merchandise traffic at 50% of the company's haulage.
C&O continued to be one of the most profitable and financially sound railways
in America, and in 1963 started the modern
merger era by "affiliating" with the
ancient modern of railroads, the hoary Baltimore & Ohio. Avoiding a mistake that
would
become endemic to later mergers among other lines, a gradual amalgamation
of the two lines' services, personnel, motive
power and rolling stock, and
facilities built a new and stronger system, which was ready for a new name in
1972.
Under the leadership of the visionary Hays T. Watkins, the C&O, B&O and
Western Maryland became Chessie System,
taking on the name officially that had
been used colloquially for so long for the C&O,
after the mascot kitten used in
ads since 1934.
Under Watkins' careful and visionary leadership Chessie System then merged
with Seaboard System, itself a combination
of great railroads of the Southeast
including Seaboard Air Line Railway, Atlantic Coast Line,
Louisville &
Nashville, Clinchfield, and others, to form a new mega-railroad: CSX.
Today, CSX, after taking on 43% of Conrail, is one of four major railroad
systems left in the country. It is still an
innovative leader, true to its roots
in Robert Young and "For Progress," the Van Sweringens and their quest for
efficiency
and standardization, to George Stevens and his dedication to
operating efficiency and safety awareness, back to
Collis Huntington and his
dreams of a transportation empire, and even back to those long forgotten
Virginians who started
it all to c their farm produce to market in the
1830's in a different world, the world before the Railroad.
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Pictures and Story from Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society
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