01 December 1959: The modern merger era begins with the absorption of the Virginian Railway into the Norfolk and Western Railway. 1
The Virginian spanned approximately 600 route miles in West Virginia and Virginia, with its western terminus at Deepwater Bridge connecting it to the New York Central, and its eastern terminus being the coal docks at Sewalls Point. The latter was, of course, in direct competition with the previously-established (and Pennsylvania Railroad-affiliated) Norfolk and Western. The Virginian, headquartered in Victoria, also had connections with the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Southern Railway, and the Seaboard Air Line; most of these connections were made in the central and eastern parts of Virginia.
The Virginian is notable for, among other things, its motive power choices. It was one of the railways that embraced the 2-8-4 Berkshire wheel arrangement, which it designated class "BA".2 More interestingly, the Virginian strung catenary over its 134 route miles from Mullens, WV, to Roanoke. This allowed for three really interesting types of electric locomotives, some of which soldiered on into the 1980s.
The first, type EL-3A, consisted of three locomotives connected by drawbars (changeable to couplers for single-unit operation) and with each locomotive riding on a 1-B-B-1 wheel arrangement. A complete EL-3A had 7125 horsepower, a continuous tractive effort of 231,000 pounds, and weighed over 1.28 million pounds.
The nifty thing about them was the fact that they were siderod equipped, and thus were imposing monsters, toting the freakish look of a boxcab combined with some of the most visible moving parts on a steam locomotive. Imagine, if you will, a shoe box with a few windows cut in it. Stick a bunch of wheels (eight pairs, to be exact) under it and put a pantograph on top of the box. There, you've your basic boxcab electric locomotive. Now, walk over to the nearest large-scale steam locomotive. See the drive rods on the thing? (They're the big long pieces of metal connecting the driving wheels. Look in the middle of the wheels.) Take them off, and attach them your electric boxcab. Do this two more times, and you've got an EL-3A.
When you're done, add to it the ominous electrical hum that would have been emitted from one of these things at speed, and you've got a recipe for a fearsome looking monster purring downgrade with a load of coal, lurching out of the West Virginia mountains as if it were Dr. Frankenstein's latest creation.
The EL-3As entered service in 1925, and the last was retired by February 1960' none survive today.
The next nifty Virginian electric was the EL-2B, road numbers 125-128. This hulking beast looked approximately like a pair of Fairbanks-Morse car body diesels matched rear to rear, with a pantograph added. Born in the Erie, Pennsylvania shops of General Electric, these started arriving on the property in early 1948. They had 6800 horsepower, and weighed just over one million pounds. Geared for maximum tractive effort, these locomotives had a top speed of 50 MPH. As with the EL-3A, none of the EL-2Bs survive today.
The last Virginian electric was the EL-C, VGN road numbers 130-141. These were, approximately, the little brothers of the Pennsylvania Railroad's E44 electrics, and looked like a brick on wheels. (Somewhere, railroad employees actually referred to either the EL-C or the E44 as a 'brick'. Go figure.) These units were geared for 65MPH operation, weighed 394,000 pounds, and often were operated rear to rear. They arrived on the Virginian in late 1956 and early 1957; all would be sold to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in October 1963. They served on the New Haven until its forcible inclusion in the Penn Central Railroad as of early 1969. All would thus be around for eventual inclusion into Conrail in April 1976, and finished their lives when Conrail abandoned electrified freight operations.
Two survive, one in the Northeast and one at Roanoke's Virginia Museum of Transportation.
An excellent article on the Virginian Railway can be found here.
1 It can be argued, and some have done it, that the "modern merger era" actually began with the creation of the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio in 1940. This more-or-less North-South operation combined the Mobile & Ohio with the Gulf, Mobile & Northern; extension to Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois through acquisition of the Alton Railroad occurred in 1947.
That's all well and good, but I live within earshot and eyesight of the old Norfolk and Western, and I'll be darned if I don't trumpet Precision Transportation (along with its successor, the Thoroughbred of Transportation) at every opportunity. This is, in other words, media bias in action. Eat your heart out, Brent Bozell.
2 A Berkshire has been painted as VGN 507 for Microsoft's Train Simulator; although it lacks VGN-specific detailing, it is a nice locomotive; see the file library at train-sim.com for details. Additionally, other VGN motive power has been produced. The Fairbanks-Morse Trainmaster model by some fellow named Enocell has been painted for the VGN, and someone's made an EL-2B, of which you will read more shortly.
Posted by Country Pundit at December 1, 2004 01:47 AM