Peninsula Extension - Building The Peninsula Extension

Building The Peninsula Extension

To extend the line east to Hampton Roads from the end of the former Virginia Central Railroad at Richmond in the Shockhoe Valley, there was only a single major obstacle: Richmond's Church Hill, occupied by some of the city's older and nicer buildings. From there east, the only significant obstacles across the gentle coastal plains a distance of about 75 miles (121 km) were several rivers and some wetlands down the Peninsula to reach Newport News.

The initial solution to overcoming that major obstacle in Richmond was the Church Hill Tunnel. The tracks to the new tunnel left the old Virginia Central line west of 17th street and curved southeasterly to enter the tunnel east of N. 18th Street and north of E. Marshall Street under Cedar Street. The east end of the 4,000-foot (1,200 m) long tunnel appeared just north of today's Williamsburg Road near 31st Street below Libby Terrace Park.

The construction of the Church Hill Tunnel was problematic. Unlike the bedrock through which the C&O carved its western tunnels, in Richmond, the blue marl clay shrink-swell soil tended to change with rainfall and groundwater. There were cave-ins during the construction. Ten workers were reportedly killed. The tunnel was completed and opened in 1875. East of the tunnel, the C&O established its Fulton Yard, with a capacity of thousands of rail cars, a roundhouse to service the steam locomotives, and other support facilities. Planning and right-of-way acquisition for the Peninsula Extension took another 5 years.

From Fulton Yard, after climbing out of the James River Valley, the surveyors generally followed the high ground of the Peninsula between the rivers which border it. As a result, the route selected faced only gentle grades through coastal plains of the Tidewater region of Virginia, dropping only about 30 feet (9.1 m) in elevation, from Richmond (54 feet above sea-level) to Newport News (at 15 feet (4.6 m) above sea-level). The new C&O line ran through several American Civil War battlefield areas in eastern Henrico County and then through Charles City County, New Kent County, James City County, York County and Warwick County. It crossed the Chickahominy River south of Bottoms Bridge and the Warwick River east of Lee Hall.

Construction on the tracks between Richmond and Newport News began in Newport News in December, 1880. In a method used before by Huntington, work also began from Richmond the following February, and crews at each end worked toward each other. The crews met and completed the line 1.25 miles (2.01 km) west of Williamsburg on October 16, 1881 although temporary tracks had been installed in some areas to speed completion. This was just in the nick of time because Huntington and his associates had promised they would provide rail service to Yorktown, where the United States was celebrating the centennial of the surrender of the British troops under Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. (That event was considered most symbolic of the end of the conflict, which was later formalized by the Treaty of Paris in 1783). Only 3 days after the last spike ceremony, on October 19, the first passenger train from Newport News took local residents and national officials to the Cornwallis Surrender Centennial Celebration at Yorktown on temporary tracks which were laid from the main line at the new Lee Hall Depot to Yorktown, and then removed afterward.