Virginian Railway
| Virginian Railway
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | |
| founding | March 1907 |
| resolution | December 1, 1959 |
| Reason for dissolution | Merger with Norfolk and Western Railway |
| Seat |
Norfolk , Virginia United States
|
| Branch | Railway company |
The Virginian Railway ( VGN ) was one of the smallest and youngest first-order railway companies in the eastern United States in the states of Virginia and West Virginia . It was built to move high quality hard coal from West Virginia for shipment to Hampton Roads . The Virginian Railway, despite its small size, was a highly technical and highly profitable railway company. The company existed from March 1907 to December 1, 1959. The main line is now part of the Norfolk Southern Railway .
history
In 1898, civil engineer William Nelson Page founded the Loup Creek and Deepwater Railway in West Virginia to build a four-mile stretch from Deepwater on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) south into the mountains to a sawmill. Two years later, he renamed the company Deepwater Railway and developed a plan to reach previously undeveloped coal fields via a 137 kilometers (85 miles) long shortline railroad . In 1902, Henry Huttleston Rogers , vice president of the Standard Oil Company , acquired a stake in the company. Neither the C&O nor the Norfolk and Western Railway were willing to agree on freight tariffs with the company, so Page and Rogers decided to build their own 440 mile (710 km) stretch from the coal fields to the tidewater region of Norfolk, Virginia ) to build. The Deepwater Railway concession was used up to the state border of West Virginia, and the Tidewater Railway was founded in February 1904 for operations in Virginia. The latter changed its name to Virginian Railway in March 1907 and bought the Deepwater Railway in April of that year. On April 15, 1907, William Nelson Page became the first President of the Virginian Railway. The last nail was driven on January 29, 1909 on the west side of the bridge over the New River at Glen Lyn , not far from the state line between Virginia and West Virginia.
Steam traction
In 1909 the first mallets were bought, first (1'C) C locomotives and then within a decade (1'D) D1 'and (1'E) E1' locomotives. A triplex locomotive was even experimented with , the XA with the wheel arrangement (1'D) D + D2 ', which, however, could not generate enough steam for the six cylinders. The (1'D) D1'-Mallets, supported by two (1'E) E1 'locomotives as push locomotives , managed 5500 ton trains over the section between Elmore and Clarks Gap. All the locomotives in such a train weighed a total of 1150 t and had a total pulling force of 1820 kN. When the train reached the top of the pass at Clarks Gap, the push-pull locomotives were disconnected and the locomotive at the head brought the train to Princeton on its own .
The administrative offices and workshops that were responsible for the operation of the section through the Allegheny Mountains were located in Princeton . Here, 8000 t trains were formed from the arriving wagons for the onward journey to the east. When leaving Princeton, the trains were pushed by two shunting locomotives and then drove with a (1'D) D1'-Mallet alone to Whitehorne, where they were pushed by a second Mallet machine to Merrimac. The rest of the journey to the port was handled by the trains with the tractors alone, although it was difficult to brake on the 15-per-mil ramp on the east side of the Alleghenys. Until the introduction of the Battleship Gondolas, the trains consisted of 85 coal wagons with a capacity of 50 tons each.
Battleship Gondolas
The Virginian Railway was considered a pioneer in the introduction of six-axle coal wagons. During the First World War , the Virginian Railway ordered four model wagons of a type with a capacity of 120 t, which was soon to be given the nickname Battleship Gondolas , "battleship freight wagons". They proved themselves in test operations, so that in 1920 the railway procured 1,000 cars of a similar design from the Pressed Steel Car Company (PSC). The Battleship Gondolas were emptied with a car tipping system so that they could be carried out without floor flaps. The cars were equipped with the Double Capacity Brake , "brake with double braking power", from the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO), which had a manually operated load brake . Per car two cylinders were mounted, one of which only the load-change position loaded was used. When the load change was operated correctly, the wagons always had 40 braking hundredths in contrast to the old wagons without load braking , which had 60 hundredths empty and 15 to 20 hundredths when full. A third cylinder in the braking system of the Battleship Gondolas had the function of a braking device . In a record run in 1921, a (1'E) E1'-Mallet drove a load of 17,050 tons from Princeton to Norfolk.
electrification
With the opening of new coal mines in the Appalachian Mountains, the volume of traffic continued to rise, so that the single-track line operated by steam locomotives soon reached its capacity limit. Instead of building a second track and acquiring additional locomotives, the Virginian Railway therefore switched to another alternative that was already being used by the neighboring Norfolk and Western Railway: the electrification of the inclined line with 11 kV 25 Hz alternating current with overhead line operation. Work began in 1923 on the 216 km (134 mile) stretch from Mullens through Clarks Gap and into Roanoke.
In Narrows (Virginia) private was Bahn power plant built. The power plant has five 14.9 MW steam boilers. The steam generated drove four 25 Hz, 11 kV AC turbo-generators. With three of the generators, the expected output of 43,000 kW could be generated. The network was designed to provide 14,000 kW of power when a 6000-ton train started. Excess regenerative electricity generated when braking was converted into heat by means of a water resistor. The electricity generated was stepped up to 88 kV with four transformers and transported to seven substations along the route. There the current was transformed back down to 11 kV. In 1928, an 88 kV line was built for Norfolk & Western as needed. The steel H-masts for the contact wire were at a distance of 97.5 meters. The entire electrical equipment of the railway including the locomotives was designed for a later increase in performance also for operation with 22 kV, which was never used.
The 10 triple EL-3A locomotives were delivered by ALCo and Westinghouse in 1925 and 1926. They consisted of 30 identical units, each of which was coupled together in threes. Six units were delivered as single locomotives with the designation EL-1A . The first section between Elmore and Clarks Gap began operating in September 1925. The entire route to Roanoke was completed on September 18, 1926. The cost of electrification was $ 15 million, or nearly $ 200 million in today's prices.
At the opening, an 8000 ton train with two three-part locomotives drove up the slope at Clarks Gap. A train of equal weight, drawn by three mallets, started with a 15-minute lead. Halfway through the route, the train pulled by the electric locomotives had overtaken the steam-powered one. The electric locomotives took 1 hour to climb the slope instead of 2.5 hours.
In daily operation, 6000-tonne trains were put together in the Mullens marshalling yard, each equipped with an EL-3A as a train locomotive and another as a pusher and thus transported to the top of the pass at Clarks Gap. There, the train was supplemented by a further 3000 tons to form a 9000-ton train and led to Roanoke with a single EL-3A. In 1924 around 7.4 million tons of coal were transported. This amount rose to 11.8 million in 1927 and amounted to around 13 million tons during World War II . In 1948 the transport capacity reached 15.5 million tons.
In 1936, the Virginian Railway took over the Virginian and Western Railway , which it had leased since May 20, 1920.
After the Second World War
In 1946 the power plant was renovated and in 1949/1950 it received an additional steam boiler and a 10,000 kW turbo generator. This increased the output of the power plant by 25%. In 1948, the Virginian received four new EL-2B double locomotives from General Electric to replace the old vehicles. At that time, these locomotives were the locomotives with the highest continuous train power in the world. After the originally purchased locomotives had largely reached the end of their operational capability in the mid-1950s, the question arose whether electrical operation should be maintained or whether diesel locomotives should now also be used on the mountain route. The Virginian Railway decided to continue electric train operations and ordered twelve new locomotives from General Electric. The EL-C machines delivered in 1956/1957 , together with the French BB 12000, were the first AC locomotives with Ignitron - mercury vapor rectifiers . After these locomotives went into service, the EL-3A and EL-1A were retired.
Passenger train traffic never played an important role for the Virginian Railway. Even in 1930 there was only one day connection west and one day and night train connection east of Roanoke. Upgraded travel was limited to a sleeping car from Roanoke to Norfolk and a saloon car with a route from Roanoke to Huntington, West Virginia . Both disappeared together with the night train Roanoke – Norfolk in 1933. On January 29, 1956, the last passenger train, a local train from Norfolk to Roanoke, ran.
At the end of 1925, the Virginian was still operating 877 kilometers (545 miles) of track on 1,451 kilometers (902 miles), at the end of 1956 it was 983 kilometers (611 miles) on a 1,752 kilometers (1,089 miles) track network. The traffic performance increased over the same period from 2,771 to 5358 tonne miles, according to the Interstate Commerce Commission . The railway company switched to diesel locomotives within a short time. A total of 66 diesel-electric locomotives were procured from 1954 to 1957, including 25 mainline locomotives of the type H-24-66 ( Train Masters ) and 40 smaller shifting locomotives for the line service of the type H-16-44 . In June 1957 the last steam locomotives were finally shut down.
The Virginian Railway and the neighboring Norfolk & Western were jointly operated by the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) during the First World War . After the war they were transferred back to their respective owners, but the N&W never lost interest in a takeover, especially because of the lowland route in Virginia. There were also attempts by Chesapeake & Ohio and other railroad companies to take over the profitable Virginian, but the ICC prohibited any attempts until the late 1950s. On December 1, 1959, the two railway companies finally merged. An almost immediate consequence of the merger was that Norfolk & Western developed a one-way traffic concept to avoid the steepest gradients. Accordingly, the electric locomotives only carried freight trains eastwards from Princeton to Roanoke. This eliminated the incline between Elmore and Clarks Gap. The electrical operation ceased on June 30, 1962. The EL-2B were scrapped and the EL-C sold the N&W to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad .
Route network
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The main route ran from Deepwater in West Virginia to Norfolk in Virginia. Branch lines opened up the numerous coal mines in the deeply cut valleys of West Virginia.
From Deepwater the route leads over Clark's Gap and Princeton in the Blue Ridge Mountains to Roanoke . The 22 km section of Elmore and Clarks Gap in West Virginia is a 21 ‰ grade which is the toughest part of the route which also set the total capacity of the route. In the case of steam traction, the trains were pushed towards the port on the approximately 14 km long 6 ‰ ramp between Whitethorne and Merrimac. Between Princeton and Kellysville a 19 km long, between Merrimac and Fagg a 14 km long descent with an incline of 15 ‰ had to be negotiated.
To the east of Roanoke, the route ran fairly straight through the Atlantic coastal plain to Norfolk, with less gradients and counter gradients of less than 2 ‰ .
The main line today belongs to the Norfolk Southern Railway and is still in operation except for the section from Meherrin (Virginia) eastwards to Suffolk (Virginia) .
Locomotives
Steam locomotives
The Virginian Railway's steam locomotives came from either Baldwin or the ALCO's Richmond plant . The class designation consisted of a first letter, which denoted the characteristics of the locomotive and a second, ascending letter used to distinguish the different types within the class.
Meaning of the first letter of the class name
- A.
- A rticulated " jointed " used for the mallet locomotive
- B.
- Locomotives with a 1'D2 ' wheel arrangement with the name B erkshire
- C.
- Locomotives with a 1'D wheel arrangement with the name C onsolidation
- M.
- Locomotives with the wheel arrangement 1'D1 'with the name M ikado
- P
- P assenger used for passenger locomotives
- S.
- S hunter used for shunting locomotives
- US
- Locomotives on the unit series Heavy the U nited S tates Railroad Administration based
- X
- E x perimental used for a test locomotive
| class | No. | Wheel alignment | Construction year | Manufacturer | image | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SA | 1-5 | D. | 1909/1910 | ALCo , Baldwin |  |
|
| SB | 240-254 | D. | 1942/1943 | Lima | ||
| CA | 300-302 | 1'D | 1904/1905 | ALCo | ||
| CB | 303 + 304 | 1'D | 1905 | Baldwin | ||
| CC | 305 | 1'D | 1909 | ALCo | ||
| CD | 306 + 307 | 1'D | 1907 | ALCo | ||
| MA | 400-405 | 1'D1 ' | 1905, 1907 | Baldwin | ||
| MB | 420-461 | 1'D1 ' | 1909-1910 | Baldwin |
|
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| MC | 462-479 | 1'D1 ' | 1912 | Baldwin |
|
|
| MCA | 480-484 | 1'D1 ' | 1912 | Baldwin | Conversion from class MC | |
| MD | 410 | 1'D1 ' | 1921 | Baldwin |
|
Conversion from a class XA tender engine |
| BA | 505-509 | 1'D2 ' | 1946 | Lima | ||
| AA | 500-503 | (1'C) C | 1909 | ALCo |
|
|
| FROM | 600 | (1'D) D1 ' | 1910 | Baldwin |
|
|
| AC | 510-517 | (1'C) C | 1910 | Baldwin |
|
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| AD | 601-606 | (1'D) D1 ' | 1912, 1913 | ALCo |
|
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| AE | 800-809 | (1'E) E1 ' | 1918 | ALCo |
|
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| AF | 610 | (1'D) D | 1921 | ALCo |
|
Conversion from class XA |
| AG | 900-907 | (1'C) C3 ' | 1945 | Lima |
|
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| United States | 701-720 | (1'D) D1 ' | 1919 | ALCo |
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| USB | 721-735 | (1'D) D1 ' | 1923 | ALCo | ||
| USE | 736-742 | (1'D) D1 ' | 1919 | ALCo |
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| XA | 700 | (1'D) D + D2 ' | 1916 | Baldwin |
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The manufacturer retournier and the classes 1920 AF and MD rebuilt |
| EA | 100-105 | 2 B | 1906, 1907 | Baldwin | ||
| TA | 200-203 | 2'C | 1907 | ALCo | ||
| PA | 210-215 | 2'C1 ' | 1920 | ALCo |
|
Electric locomotives
The class designation consisted of the designation EL for EL ectric Locomotive , a hyphen followed by a number for the number of sections of the locomotive and an ascending letter for the series. In the EL-C series , the 1 for the number of sections has been omitted.
| No. | model series | Wheel alignment | Construction year | Manufacturer | image | Note / nickname |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100-109 | EL-3A | (1'B) - (B1 ') + (1'B) - (B1') + (1'B) - (B1 ') | 1925-1926 | ALCo , Westinghouse |  |
Triple Locomotives Squarehead "Square Skull " |
| 110-115 | EL-1A | (1'B) - (B1 ') | 1925-1926 | ALCo , Westinghouse | individual sections of the EL-3A | |
| 125-128 | EL-2B | (Bo'Bo ') - (Bo'Bo') + (Bo'Bo ') - (Bo'Bo') | 1948 | General Electric |
|
Streamliner double locomotive |
| 130-141 | EL-C | Co'Co ' | 1956 | General Electric |  |
AC recitifiers |
Diesel locomotives
| No. | model series | Construction year | image | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6th | GE 44-ton switcher | 1941 | ex New Haven No. 0806, resold in 1960 | |
| 10-49 | FM H-16-66 | 1954-1957 | |
|
| 50-74 | FM H-24-66 | 1954/1957 |
literature
- George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads . 2nd Edition. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha, WI 2000, ISBN 0-89024-356-5 , pp. 413-419 .
- William D. Middleton : When the steam railroads electrified . 2nd revised edition. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2001, ISBN 978-0-253-33979-9 (American English).
- William R. Archer: The Virginian Railway . Arcadia, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7385-5274-3 .
Web links
- John Dziobko, Jr .: Virginian Railway (VGN) Photos. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b The Virginian Railway, The Big Little Coal Hauler. In: The American Railroads: A Long and Storied History. Retrieved September 1, 2012 .
- ↑ a b E.I. Staples: The First Virginian Electric Locomotive . In: Railroad and Locomotive Engineering . Vol. 18, No. 6 , p. 157-159 ( archive.org ).
- ↑ a b The 120-Ton Coal Cars of the Virginian Railroad . In: Railway and Locomotive Engineering . tape 34 , no. 5 . New York May 1921, p. 121-124 ( archive.org ).
- ↑ NWHS NW10399-Photo. In: www.nwhs.org. Retrieved June 17, 2016 .
- ^ A b c George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads . 2nd Edition. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha 1999, ISBN 0-89024-356-5 , pp. 442-443 .
- ^ The climb to Clark's Gap via the former Virginian Railroad. In: Trains Magazine. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
- ^ New Record Demonstration of Heavy Tonnage Train Handling To Illustrate the Practicability of Handling . In: Railway and Locomotive Engineering . tape 34 , no. 6 . New York June 1921, p. 150-155 ( archive.org ).
- ↑ NWHS VG00684-Photo. In: www.nwhs.org. Retrieved June 16, 2016 .
- ^ A b The Diesel Shop: Virginian Railway Diesel & Electric Roster
- ^ A b The climb to Clark's Gap via the former Virginian Railroad. In: Train of Thoughts. Trains Magazine, April 16, 2013, accessed June 25, 2016 : "[...] a fleet of EL-3As (dubbed Squareheads) [...] General Electric-built EL-2B (the railroad dubbed them Streamliners) [...]"
- ^ Image in The Virginian Railway, The Big Little Coal Hauler. In: The American Railroads: A Long and Storied History. Retrieved September 1, 2012 .