Building The Virginian Railway - From The Mountains To The Sea

From The Mountains To The Sea

While they may not have recognized the collusion of the C&O and N&W, Page and Rogers did know that the larger railroads would surely attempt to block any effort to extend the Deepwater a great distance to reach any other major trunk lines, many of which such as the New York Central, Pennsylvania and Baltimore and Ohio Railroad were also under common control of sorts (although it is not known if Page and Rogers realized or even suspected this). However, to their advantage, the Deepwater Railway charter already granted by West Virginia came to a location within a fairly short distance of the Virginia state line.

Railroads in the United States often grew by combining smaller lines, and that is how the C&O and N&W each had grown between the 1830s and 1898 when the Deepwater Railway began its expansions. However, there appeared to be no extant Virginia short-lines available for the Deepwater interests to acquire to suit their needs. Therefore, on October 13, 1904, they had new intrastate railroad company, the Tidewater Railway chartered in Virginia to be used for the portion of their project to be in that state. The headquarters were in Staunton, where one of Henry Rogers' lawyers, Thomas D. Ransom, was based and Col. Page had relatives. In the new charter, no direct reference was made to a possible future connection with the Deepwater, nor was one precluded by limiting language.

In those days, railroad and real estate attorneys generally practiced in only one state, with land matters (such as right-of-way) generally handled in various local county courts. Apparently because the Deepwater Railway in West Virginia and Tidewater Railway in Virginia were each under the jurisdiction of their respective states, an association between the two little railroads was not identified initially by the various lawyers for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the Norfolk and Western Railway.

Planning and land acquisition for the Tidewater Railway were done largely in secret. In his book The Virginian Railway (Kalmbach, 1961), author H. Reid described some of the tactics used. Reid recalled that on a Sunday in February, 1905, a group of 35 surveyors from New York disguised themselves as fishermen and rode to the location aboard a N&W passenger train. While they stood in icy water apparently "fishing" with their transit poles, the surveyors mapped out a crossing of the New River at Glen Lyn, as well as the adjacent portion of the line through Narrows to point near Radford.

After leaving the valley of the New River, the new line was surveyed to cross the U.S. Eastern Continental Divide in a mile-long tunnel to be built near Merrimac, Virginia. After descending on the eastern side of the mountain, the new line for the Tidewater Railway essentially followed the valley of the Roanoke River past the cities of Salem and Roanoke and through the water gap formed by the Roanoke River in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the terrain changed to the more gentle rolling hills of the Piedmont region, the plan was to run almost due east across Southside Virginia to Suffolk, within just a few miles of the goal: Hampton Roads, one of the world's largest harbors. There, ships could be loaded with coal destined for northeastern U.S. ports, or other countries overseas.

Agents for the Tidewater Railway quietly struck deals with the landowners and various communities all along the way. Many were small towns and villages that had been passed by when the big railroads were choosing routes and building 20–25 years earlier, and the new railroad was welcomed. At several key points, negotiations were especially sensitive. Roanoke was one such place, as the Norfolk & Western had virtually put Roanoke on the map only 20 years earlier when it had been only a tiny town known as Big Lick. However, in the spirit of free enterprise, the leaders of the City of Roanoke agreed to provide the needed right-of-way through the city along the north bank of the Roanoke River. This was only a short distance from N&W's general offices and principal shops.