Norfolk and Western Railway - Frederick J. Kimball, Big Lick Becomes Roanoke, Reaching Ohio

Frederick J. Kimball, Big Lick Becomes Roanoke, Reaching Ohio

George F. Tyler was named to head the new N&W when it was organized in May, 1881. Frederick J. Kimball, a civil engineer and partner in the Clark firm. was named First Vice President. Henry Fink, who Mahone had hired in 1855, became Second Vice President and General Superintendent. For the junction for the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and the Norfolk & Western, Kimball and his board of directors selected a small Virginia village called Big Lick, on the Roanoke River. The small town was later renamed Roanoke, Virginia.

Although the railroad primarily transported agricultural products in when it was formed from the A,M & O in 1881, Kimball, who had a strong interest in geology, led the railroad's efforts to open the Pocahontas coalfields in western Virginia and southern West Virginia. In mid-1881, the N&W acquired the franchises to four other lines: the New River Railroad, the New River Railroad, Mining and Manufacturing Company, the Bluestone Railroad, and the East River Railroad. Consolidated into the New River Railroad Company, with Kimball as President, these lines became the basis for Norfolk and Western's New River Division, which was soon built from New Kanawha (near East Radford) up the west bank of the New River through Pulaski County and into Giles County to the mouth of the East River near Glen Lyn, Virginia. From there, the new line ran up the East River, criss-crossing the Virginia-West Virginia border several times to reach the coalfields to the west near the Great Flat Top Mountain.

Coal transported initially to Norfolk soon became the N&W's primary commodity, and led to great wealth and profitability. Kimball became president of the entire Norfolk and Western system, and oversaw continued expansion. Under his leadership, N&W continued west with its lines through the wilds of West Virginia with the Ohio Extension, eventually extending north across the Ohio River to Columbus, Ohio by the Scioto Valley Railroad. Acquisition of other lines, including the Cincinnati, Portsmouth and Virginia Railroad (CP&V RR) (which it had long supported and leased) extended the N&W system west along the Ohio River to Cincinnati, Ohio, south from Lynchburg to Durham, North Carolina and south from Roanoke to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This gave the railroad the basic route structure it was to use for more than 60 years by the time of Kimball's death in 1903.

Author Nelson Blake noted in his biography of William Mahone that, while the former General had lost control of "his" (and wife Otelia's) railroad and its future by 1881, he retained personal ownership of considerable land in the new coal regions. By his death in 1895, the N&W's expansion and coal traffic had helped him become one of the wealthiest men in Virginia.