scoring
Y1912
1946
j04: 649 10
S1942
T1954
1960s
may be by
"WPC"
"Brown&
Bigelow",
c.1970
1980
WWPCM07696
"USPCC" (USA)
deck "Chesapeake and Ohio Railway", since 1930s
dimension 57x89 mm, standard
narrow-1
courts
HISTORY OF
THE CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RAILWAY
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in
Virginia from many smaller railroads begun in the 19th century. Headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio, USA, in 1972, it became part of the Chessie System, which was
the creation of Hays T. Watkins, Jr., then president and chief executive officer
of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, along with the Baltimore and Ohio and Western
Maryland Railway. In 1980, the Chessie system combined with Seaboard Coast Line
Industries to form CSX Corporation, which by 1987 had merged all its railroad
subsidiaries into CSX Transportation, one of seven Class I railroads operating
in North America at the beginning of the 21st century.
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,
also begun in Virginia in 1785. The C&O of the 1950s and 1960s at its peak
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 the
Virginia Central Railroad. 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 RR
built over the mountains, using four tunnels, including the 4,263-foot Blue
Ridge Tunnel at the top of the pass, then one of the longest tunnels in the
world.
While the Blue Ridge was being breached, Virginia Central was building westward
from the west foot of the mountains, across the Great Valley of Virginia (The
Shenandoah Valley), and the Shenandoah range (Great North Mountain), reaching a
point known as Jackson's River Station, at the foot of the Alleghany Mountains (note
that in Virginia Alleghany is spelled with an "a"), in 1856. This is the site
that would be called Clifton Forge later.
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 and Ohio Railroad. This company
completed important grading work on the Alleghany grade and did considerable
work on numerous tunnels over the mountains and in the west. It also did a good
deal of roadway work around Charleston on the Kanawha River. Then the American
Civil War intervened, and work was stopped on the westward expansion.
During the Civil War the Virginia Central Railroad was one of the Confederacy's
most important lines, carrying food from the Shenandoah region to Richmond, and
ferrying troops and supplies back and forth as the campaigns surrounded its
tracks frequently. It had an important connection with the Orange and Alexandria
Railroad at Gordonsville, Virginia. On more than one occasion, the Virginia
Central 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, led by company president Williams
Carter Wickham, 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 them [Note: the name was Railroad
at this time ... it will be changed later to Railway] in keeping with its new
mission of linking the Tidewater coast of Virginia with the "Western Waters."
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 completed at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia on January 28, 1873. The West
Virginia stretch of the C & O was the site of the legendary competition between
John Henry and a steam-powered machine; the competition is said to have took
place in a tunnel south of Talcott, West Virginia near the Greenbrier River.
Typical of the men who built the C & O during this period was William N. Page, a
civil engineer who had attended special courses in engineering at the University
of Virginia before he went to work on the railroad. Page directed the location
and construction of the New River Canyon Bridge in 1871 and 1872, and of the
Mill Creek Canyon bridge in 1874. In 1875 and 1876, he led the surveying party
charged with mapping out the route of the double-track railway to extend between
Hampton Roads and the Ohio River via the New River and Kanawha Valleys of West
Virginia. Like many men who came to West Virginia with the railroad, Page was
struck with both the beauty and potential of the natural resources and is
considered one of the more energetic and successful men who helped develop West
Virginia's rich bituminous coal fields in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Page settled in the tiny mountain hamlet of Ansted, West Virginia, a town
located in Fayette County near Hawk's Nest, on high bluffs overlooking the New
River far below, where the C&O occupied both sides of the narrow valley.
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 and over the next few years 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.
Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Collis P. Huntington and his associates
began buying up land in Warwick County, Virginia. During the ten years from 1878
to 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 coast-wise
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 in a reorganization without
foreclosure that saw his majority interest lost to the interests of J.P. Morgan
and William K. Vanderbilt. In those days before US anti-trust laws were created,
both many smaller railroads which appeared to be in competition with each other
were essentially under common control. Even the leaders of Pennsylvania Railroad
(PRR) and New York Central Railroad (NYC) had secretly entered into a "community
of interests" pact.
Morgan and Vanderbilt had Melville E. Ingalls installed as President. Ingalls
was, at the time, also President of the Vanderbilt's Cleveland, Cincinnati,
Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (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 and Alleghany Railroad, which had been built along the
tow-path of the defunct James River and 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" would be the principal artery of
eastbound coal transportation down 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, West Virginia
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 lines 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 and Michigan and (K&M)
Hocking Valley (HV) 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 carry trains
from Kenova,. W. Va. 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. (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. It was
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 Van Sweringen brothers (O. P. and M. J. Van Sweringen), bought a 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 Railroad (in
Michigan and Ontario), and Erie railroads. They managed to control this huge (for
the time) 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 Great
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 material in unimagined quantities as the U. S. 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 World War II, 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 eye through
Robert Ralph Young, its mercurial Chairman, and his Alleghany Corporation.
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 (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-staff 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 suicide
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 steam to diesel motive power, and diversified
its traffic, which had already occurred in 1947 when it merged into the system
the old Pere Marquette Railroad (PM) of Michigan and Ontario, Canada, which had
been controlled by the C&O since Van Sweringen days. The PM's huge automotive
industry traffic, taking raw materials in and finished vehicle 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 more profitable and financially sound railways in
the United States, and in 1963, under the guidance of Cyrus S. Eaton, helped
start 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 Jr., the C&O, B&O and Western
Maryland Railway 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 Railroad (itself a combination of great railroads of the
Southeast including Seaboard Air Line, Atlantic Coast Line, Louisville &
Nashville Railroad, Clinchfield Railroad and others), to form a new
mega-railroad: CSX Transportation (CSX).
Today, CSX, after acquiring 42% of Conrail in 1999, is one of four major
railroad systems left in the country, and still an innovative leader, true to
its roots in Robert Young at "For Progress," the Van Sweringens and their quest
for efficiency and standardization, to George Stevens and his dedication to
operation efficiency and safety awareness, back to Collis P. Huntington and his
dreams of a transportation empire, and even back to those old, long forgotten
Virginians who started it all to carry their farm produce to market in 1830.