BOOK REVIEW: ?The Virginian Railway?

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Prolific author and Bluefield (WV) Daily Telegraph senior writer William R. ?Bill? Archer uses historic photographs and pithy captions to tell the story of a remarkable engineering achievement in ?The Virginian Railway? (Arcadia Publishing, 128 pages, $19.99).

The railroad was a major spur to the growth of coal mining throughout southern West Virginia. Bill Archer worked closely with the Princeton Railroad Museum, which opened in 2006, on this nostalgic look at a significant factor in the growth of West Virginia.

Envisioned by Henry Huttleston Rogers (1840-1909), who made his immense fortune as a principal in John D. Rockefeller?s Standard Oil Company, The Virginian Railway began construction in 1907 and existed only until 1959 when it was merged into Norfolk & Western Railway, now Norfolk Southern.

Built with a personal investment of $30 million by Rogers, The Virginian Railway has been called a ?conveyer belt? on wheels and was created single-mindedly to transport high quality bituminous coal from the southern West Virginia mines to a port at Hampton Roads.

Rogers worked closely with William Nelson Page (1854-1932), a civil engineer and coal mining manager, to create one of the most efficient railroads in the nation over some of the most difficult terrain in the nation. In many respects, it was the construction forerunner of the West Virginia Turnpike, with dozens of bridges, trestles, tunnels, etc.

A native of the Old Dominion and graduate of the University of Virginia who settled in Ansted, Fayette County, WV, Page as a young man was a key figure in the construction of another railroad across West Virginia, Collis P. Huntington?s Chesapeake & Ohio Railway.

The Virginian was a combination of the Deepwater Railway, an 85-mile long short line at the Deepwater Bridge on the Kanawha River near Alloy, WV, and the Tidewater Railway, going all the way to Hampton Roads. Rogers died of a stroke shortly after his railroad was completed, so he didn?t live to see the success of his venture with Page.

Railroad history fans will love the photos in this book, which concentrates on freight ? coal ? with only a few passenger train photos. The Virginian was devoted to black gold, not passenger service. Rogers is pictured with his friend Mark Twain in a 1909 photo made just before his death (Twain, five years older, died in 1910).

Only a few months earlier, in January 1909, H.H. Rogers' dream was realized with the completion of The Virginian; the last spike connecting the two segments was driven at Glen Lyn, VA, on the New River at the Virginia-West Virginia border.

Page and Rogers had accomplished the impossible, over what was thought to be impassible terrain: they had conceived and built a modern, well-engineered rail line from the coal mines of West Virginia to a modern port at Hampton Roads right under the noses of bigger railroads like C&O and N&W. The Virginian Railway could operate more efficiently than its larger competitors because of its all-new infrastructure and no debt. It was an accomplishment like no other in the history of US railroading, before or since.

Archer also sketches the story of the friendship of Rogers with Booker T. Washington and his quiet philanthropy to aid education of African-Americans in the segregated South.

Although it hasn't existed as a separate entity for almost 50 years, The Virginian Railway has one of the largest fan bases in an internet site, http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts/

The book -- which I as a railfan recommend -- is available at Hearthside Books in Bluefield and through Amazon.com. A companion set of postcards using photos from the book is also available at $9.99. For more information about other regional and local history books from Arcadia ? of which I?ve reviewed several ? check out the web site below.

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Web site of Princeton Railroad Museum, occupying a faithful replica of the 1909-1979 Virginian Station: http://www.cityofprinceton.org/MUSEUM.rev.htm

Publisher?s web site: www.arcadiapublishing.com