Chesapeake and Ohio Railway: Map, Logo, History

Last revised: September 17, 2026

The Chesapeake & Ohio called itself George Washington’s Railroad. Reporting mark CO. The company that wore that slogan was a Virginia farm road that became one of the great Appalachian coal haulers—Newport News to Cincinnati, mines in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, a James River water-level freight line, and, after 1947, the Pere Marquette across Michigan and Ontario. Collis P. Huntington pushed it to the Ohio River in 1873. The Van Sweringens and Robert R. Young made it a Midwestern system. It took control of the Baltimore & Ohio on February 4, 1963, became the senior road in Chessie System, and vanished into CSX Transportation on August 31, 1987.

The ancestor was the Louisa Railroad, chartered February 18, 1836. First trains ran in December 1837. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company took the name on August 31, 1868. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company was the reorganization of July 1, 1878.

Chessie System Chesapeake and Ohio B30-7 8274 leading empties westbound through the yard at Clifton Forge Virginia in October 1983

Chessie System/C&O B30-7 #8274 leads empties westbound through the yard at Clifton Forge, Virginia, in October 1983. Rob Kitchen photo.

On this page: At a glance · Louisa Railroad · Virginia Central and the Blue Ridge · Civil War · Huntington to the Ohio · George Washington’s Railroad · Newport News, Cincinnati, coal · System map, 1946 · Chicago, Hocking Valley, the lakes · Van Sweringens, Pere Marquette, Young · Chessie the kitten · Steam and diesel · Passenger trains · B&O, Chessie System, CSX · What remains

At a glance

The Chesapeake & Ohio’s classic logo. Author’s work. The C&O for Progress mark is the Robert R. Young era; the older public slogan was George Washington’s Railroad.

Item	Detail
Headquarters	Richmond, Virginia (823 East Main Street). Cleveland Terminal Tower held executive offices in the Van Sweringen and Young years
Charter	Louisa Railroad, Virginia, February 18, 1836
First trains	Frederick’s Hall–Taylorsville (Doswell), December 1837
Company name	Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company, August 31, 1868. Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, July 1, 1878
Dates of operation	December 1837–August 31, 1987
States / provinces	Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois (Chicago), Michigan, New York (Buffalo); Ontario
Route-miles	2,730.29 (1930, after Hocking Valley). 5,343 (1950, after Pere Marquette)
Principal lines	Newport News–Richmond–Clifton Forge–Huntington–Cincinnati; James River Line Clifton Forge–Richmond; Gordonsville–Washington (Southern rights); Ashland–Lexington/Louisville; Catlettsburg–Elkhorn City; Russell–Columbus–Toledo; Cincinnati–Hammond (C&O of Indiana); ex-Pere Marquette Chicago–Grand Rapids–Detroit–St. Thomas–Buffalo, and Michigan car ferries
Gauge	4 ft 8½ in
Slogan / mark	George Washington’s Railroad / CO. C&O for Progress from the 1940s
B&O control	ICC December 31, 1962. Closed February 4, 1963
Chessie System, Inc.	Incorporated February 26, 1973; parent of C&O, B&O, and Western Maryland June 15, 1973
End of the name	Dissolved into CSX Transportation August 31, 1987. B&O had merged into C&O April 30, 1987
Rosters	Steam (built since 1900) · All-time diesel

Thomas W. Dixon, Jr., Chesapeake & Ohio Railway: A Concise History And Fact Book, is the company narrative. Corporate succession follows the ICC valuation (Vol. 24). 1930 and 1950 miles are the Official Guide-era plant. 1963 equipment counts on the live page were 1,053 diesels, 92,992 freight cars, and 324 passenger cars. Information compiled September 17, 2026.

Louisa Railroad, 1836

Virginia chartered the Louisa Railroad on February 18, 1836, to open a branch off the north–south Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac. The first 22.80 miles, Doswell (then Taylorsville) to Frederick’s Hall, opened in December 1837. Louisa followed in 1838, Gordonsville in 1840. Piedmont farms paid the bills. The RF&P connection at Doswell was the tidewater outlet until the company built its own line into Richmond.

On February 2, 1850 the Louisa took a name that fit a longer railroad: Virginia Central. Thomas Dixon, Jr., in Chesapeake & Ohio Railway: A Concise History And Fact Book, puts the object as the Shenandoah Valley and what was then western Virginia. The RF&P objected to a rival into Richmond. The Virginia Central reached the capital anyway; the Interstate Commerce Commission valuation books Doswell–Richmond as 1851, 26.30 miles.

Virginia Central and the Blue Ridge

West of Charlottesville the mountains began. The Commonwealth chartered the Blue Ridge Railroad on March 5, 1849 to carry the Virginia Central over Rockfish Gap. Claudius Crozet was the engineer. Four tunnels, the longest the Blue Ridge Tunnel: 4,273 feet by Crozet’s 1858 figure, opened April 13, 1858. It was then among the longest railroad tunnels in the world. The Virginia Central operated the state line from opening. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad bought the Blue Ridge company on April 1, 1870. A larger parallel bore replaced Crozet’s tunnel in 1944; CSX and Amtrak still use the new one. The old bore is a trail.

West of the Blue Ridge the Virginia Central crossed the Valley and Great North Mountain. It reached Jackson’s River Station—later the Clifton Forge area—in the mid-1850s (ICC: Millboro to Jackson River, 1858). That was about 192 miles from Richmond, enough to make the road a Confederate asset and a Union target.

Civil War

The Virginia Central carried Shenandoah food into Richmond and moved troops when the campaigns sat on its rails. Both armies wrecked it. The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society puts the road at about five miles still in service and $40 in gold in the treasury when the war ended. Crews had the line running again on July 23, 1865.

Jackson’s River to Covington, 12.60 miles, opened July 1, 1867. Beyond Covington the unfinished Covington & Ohio—chartered February 15, 1853, a state project to the Ohio River—had grading, tunnel work on Alleghany Mountain, and pieces of roadbed around Charleston. The money to finish it was gone. Virginia and West Virginia acts of March 1 and February 26, 1867, vested those rights in the Virginia Central. On August 31, 1868, the company took the name Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. The object was now Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River, the old Virginia “Great Connection.”

Huntington to the Ohio, 1869–1873

Williams C. Wickham, president after the war, needed capital the ruined South could not supply. Collis P. Huntington, just off the Central Pacific, put money in during 1869. He wanted an eastern piece of a true transcontinental. The C&O used Covington & Ohio work over Alleghany Mountain, reached White Sulphur Springs in 1869, and then built from both ends through the new state of West Virginia: east from a raw town on the Ohio that took Huntington’s name, west from White Sulphur along the Greenbrier, the New River Gorge, Gauley, and the Kanawha. The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society dates the join at Hawks Nest to January 28, 1873. Huntington, West Virginia, became the locomotive shops. The Ohio was still a packet-boat connection. Huntington did not bridge it.

The Panic of 1873 caught a railroad that had spent its cash on construction and had not yet developed the coal that would pay the bills. Receivership began October 9, 1875. Foreclosure sale was July 1, 1878. The purchaser—Huntington, A. S. Hatch, A. A. Low, Isaac Davenport Jr., and John Castree, for a committee of security holders—reorganized the property the same day as The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, under the general laws of Virginia and West Virginia. That is the corporation that lasted until CSX.

Why “George Washington’s Railroad”

Washington died thirty-seven years before the Louisa charter. The slogan ran through a canal, not through the first president’s person. Virginia chartered the James River Company in October 1784 (and again February 17, 1820) on a scheme Washington had promoted: James River navigation toward the Kanawha and the Ohio. Seven miles, Richmond to Westham, opened in 1790. The James River and Kanawha Company of March 16, 1832, pushed the canal to Buchanan by 1851 and stopped. Railroads had won.

The Richmond & Alleghany Railroad bought the canal right-of-way and, from 1880, laid track on the towpath. Laura Armitage’s Richmond & Alleghany Railroad is the article for the construction: 230.31 miles Richmond to Clifton Forge in 1881, plus 19.38 miles Balcony Falls to Lexington. Receivership began July 1, 1883. The Richmond & Alleghany Railway emerged May 20, 1889. The C&O took the property on January 20, 1890. The James River Line was the low-grade coal route the mountain Virginia Central had never been. CSX still runs it. The canal ancestry is what let the C&O put Washington on the timetables.

Newport News, Cincinnati, and the coalfields

Huntington kept control through the 1878 reorganization and spent the next decade pointing the railroad at water. The Peninsula Extension, Richmond to a new city at Newport News on Hampton Roads, opened 1881–82 (ICC books Richmond–Newport News as 1882, 74.10 miles). Ice-free tidewater, coal piers, coastwise ships to the Northeast. That became the eastern staple.

West of Ashland, Huntington used the Newport News & Mississippi Valley (formed June 1879) and the Elizabethtown, Lexington & Big Sandy to reach Lexington in December 1881. Trackage rights on the Louisville & Nashville carried C&O cars into Louisville. The Big Sandy later gave the C&O its own coal line to Elkhorn City and an interchange with the Clinchfield.

In 1888 Huntington lost majority control, without a foreclosure, to J. P. Morgan and Vanderbilt interests. Mike Schafer, in More Classic American Railroads, is the usual citation. Melville E. Ingalls, already president of the Vanderbilt Big Four, took the C&O presidency; George W. Stevens ran the railroad. They rebuilt what Huntington had finished but not modernized: ballast, lined tunnels, steel bridges, heavier rail, larger power. On December 25, 1888 the Cincinnati Division opened down the south bank of the Ohio—Ashland, Augusta, Covington, Kentucky—and into Cincinnati. In 1891 trackage rights on the Virginia Midland, Orange to Washington, put C&O trains into the capital. That line became Southern Railway.

From 1900 to about 1920 the map filled with coal branches in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Shops and yards went in at Charlottesville, Gladstone, and Clifton Forge, Virginia; Handley, West Virginia; and Russell, Kentucky, which grew into the principal western coal terminal. The mountain main and the James River Line together made the C&O a coal conveyor of the same order as the neighboring Norfolk & Western, with a Tidewater pier of its own and, soon, a Great Lakes outlet.

Chesapeake and Ohio GP9s with a coal drag and Baltimore and Ohio steam locomotives at the Kenova West Virginia interchange in the 1950s

Before the C&O took control of the Baltimore & Ohio the two roads interchanged at Kenova, West Virginia, near Huntington, where the C&O main met the B&O’s Ohio River Branch. B&O steam sits at left; C&O GP9s have a coal drag. Probably the 1950s. Author’s collection.

System map, 1946

Official 1946 system map of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway

An official 1946 system map of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Author’s collection. Tidewater at right, Cincinnati and the Ohio at left; the Pere Marquette merger is still a year away.

Chicago, the Hocking Valley, and Lake Erie

Twentieth-century growth was mostly purchase. The Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville had built 284.5 miles diagonally across Indiana—Cincinnati via Richmond, Muncie, and Peru to Hammond—and gone into receivership. The C&O acquired it on June 23, 1908 and operated it as the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway of Indiana. Friendly rights into Chicago made a Tidewater–Chicago route. Most of that Indiana line later lost out to the B&O’s Chicago main and was abandoned.

Also in 1910 the C&O took control of the Hocking Valley Railway, Toledo to Athens, Jackson, Gallipolis, and Pomeroy via Columbus, with Hocking coal southeast of the capital. For years C&O coal bound for Toledo rode the Norfolk & Western from the Kenova area to Columbus, an arrangement the N&W rationed. Between 1917 and 1926 the C&O built its own connection from near Russell, Kentucky, across the Ohio at Limeville/Sciotoville to Columbus. The Sciotoville bridge remains one of the heaviest railroad spans in the country. The Hocking Valley was merged in 1930. More C&O coal then moved west to the lakes than east to Hampton Roads.

Chesapeake and Ohio GP35 3535 leading a westbound freight past the Hammond Indiana water filtration plant on C and O of Indiana and Erie trackage in July 1972

Chesapeake & Ohio GP35 #3535 leads a westbound past the Hammond Water Filtration Plant on the joint C&O of Indiana/Erie trackage through Hammond, Indiana, toward State Line interlocking in July 1972. Rick Burn photo.

Van Sweringens, Pere Marquette, and “C&O for Progress”

O. P. and M. J. Van Sweringen of Cleveland bought control of the C&O in January 1923 as part of a Nickel Plate–centered empire that also took in the Erie and, in 1924, the Pere Marquette. The ICC denied the “Greater Nickel Plate System” in 1926. The C&O kept the Pere Marquette stock. The brothers’ holding companies collapsed in the Depression; the C&O did not. Coal still moved. Cheap labor and materials in the early 1930s paid for new tunnels, double track, heavier rail, and rebuilt bridges. The railroad went into the Second World War with modern plant and modern steam. Hampton Roads was a principal port of embarkation.

Robert R. Young took control through the Van Sweringen remnants and was chairman by 1942. He put C&O for Progress on the herald, staffed a research department, and treated passenger service as a public argument about what railroads should still be. The Pere Marquette was merged on June 6, 1947. Automotive traffic in and out of Michigan gave the C&O a merchandise base that coal alone had never supplied. Walter J. Tuohy ran the railroad under Young and after; Cyrus Eaton later chaired the board from Cleveland. Young left to chair the New York Central and died in 1958.

Chesapeake and Ohio GP7 5773 switching Reed City Lumber in Reed City Michigan in August 1962

Chesapeake & Ohio GP7 #5773 works Reed City Lumber in Reed City, Michigan, in August 1962. Rick Burn photo. Ex-Pere Marquette country, fifteen years after the merger.

Chesapeake and Ohio train 25 northbound at Thompsonville Michigan in August 1962 crossing the Ann Arbor diamond

C&O train 25 northbound at Thompsonville, Michigan, in August 1962. Rick Burn, riding with his brother Don from Baldwin to Traverse City, noted the locomotive sitting on the Ann Arbor diamond (Toledo–Frankfort), heavy head-end business, a former Pere Marquette combine, and the tri-weekly Chicago–Traverse City sleeper named Traverse City.

Chessie, the sleeping kitten

The image that outlived the railroad was not a locomotive. In 1933 Lionel Probert, heading C&O public relations, bought a drawing of a sleeping kitten from the artist Guido Grenewald for $5. Probert was selling new air-conditioned sleeping cars. He named the cat Chessie, after the railroad, and wrote the line Sleep Like A Kitten And Wake Up Fresh As A Daisy In Air-Conditioned Comfort. The first advertisement ran in the September 1933 Fortune. Calendars and merchandise followed faster than the company could stock them. A father cat, Peake, and kittens Nip and Tuck joined the campaign through 1948.

The original version of Chesapeake & Ohio’s Chessie, the sleeping kitten.

Chesapeake and Ohio Chessie the kitten with Nip and Tuck

Chessie, with Nip and Tuck.

Peake the father cat from Chesapeake and Ohio Chessie advertising

Peake, the father cat in the Chessie advertisements.

The kitten receded with the passenger business. It came back as a silhouette inside the Chessie System “C” on yellow, vermilion, and blue locomotives in 1972. That holding-company story is Chessie System. The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society still sells the calendars.

Alleghenies, Greenbriers, and a late diesel

Chesapeake and Ohio 2-6-6-6 H-8 1625 charging out of the tunnels at Alleghany Virginia with an eastbound coal drag on October 19 1951

Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-6 #1625 (H-8) charges out of the tunnels at Alleghany, Virginia, with an eastbound coal drag on October 19, 1951. Bill Price photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Coal was cheap fuel, so the C&O stayed with steam later than most Class Is, as the Norfolk & Western did. Lima’s 2-6-6-6 Alleghenies (H-8, 1941–48) were built for the Alleghany grade between Hinton and Clifton Forge. The 4-8-4 Greenbriers, 2-8-4 Kanawhas, 2-10-4 T-1s of 1930 for Russell–Toledo coal, Pacifics, and Mountains are the steam roster. Baldwin’s last steam locomotives for a U.S. railroad were ten C&O H-6 2-6-6-2s of 1949, 1300–1309, for Logan coal. No. 1308’s last run was February 29, 1956. Main-line steam was finished that year.

Chesapeake and Ohio 2-6-6-6 H-8 Allegheny 1637 at Richmond Virginia circa 1956

Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-6 (H-8) Allegheny #1637 at Richmond, Virginia, circa 1956—the last year of C&O steam.

Chesapeake and Ohio steam turbine electric M-1 500 during trials in 1947

Chesapeake & Ohio steam-turbine #500 (Class M-1) during trials in 1947. Three of these Baldwin–Westinghouse machines, 500–502, were meant to power the streamliner The Chessie, which was never launched. They were scrapped in 1950. The locomotives are C&O’s M-1s.

Road diesels arrived in earnest only as steam parts and shops disappeared. Electro-Motive GP7s and GP9s took the coal branches and then the mains; E7s and E8s took the varnish. Alco, Baldwin, and GE filled in. Unit-by-unit is the diesel roster.

Trio of Chesapeake and Ohio GP9s at Charlottesville Virginia on the evening of March 8 1969

A trio of Chesapeake & Ohio GP9s at Charlottesville, Virginia, on the evening of March 8, 1969. Roger Puta photo.

Chesapeake and Ohio GP7 5896 with the Old Dominion Chapter NRHS Autumn Leaf Special at Clifton Forge Virginia October 26 1969

A shined-up Chesapeake & Ohio GP7, #5896, on the Old Dominion Chapter NRHS Autumn Leaf Special at Clifton Forge, Virginia, October 26, 1969. Roger Puta photo.

F.F.V., George Washington, Sportsman

Chesapeake and Ohio E8A 4029 on the westbound George Washington at the ferry terminal in Newport News Virginia October 1968

With Chesapeake & Ohio E8A #4029 as power, the westbound George Washington awaits departure from the ferry terminal in Newport News, Virginia, in October 1968. Roger Puta photo.

The public names, each with its own page:

Fast Flying Virginian / F.F.V. — Washington/Newport News–Cincinnati/Louisville
George Washington — Washington/Newport News–Cincinnati/Louisville, the flagship after 1932
Sportsman — Washington/Newport News–Cincinnati/Detroit
The Chessie — Washington–Cincinnati, advertised after the war, never launched; M-1 turbines and leftover Budd cars
Pere Marquette — Detroit–Grand Rapids from August 10, 1946 (first postwar streamliner), later Chicago–Grand Rapids/Muskegon
Resort Special — Chicago–Petoskey in the Pere Marquette years; later Washington–White Sulphur Springs for the Greenbrier

Chesapeake and Ohio E8A 4003 laying over at the engine terminal in Charlottesville Virginia March 8 1969

Chesapeake & Ohio E8A #4003 lays over at the small engine terminal in Charlottesville, Virginia, on March 8, 1969. Roger Puta photo.

Chesapeake and Ohio E7A 96 on train 25 Grand Rapids to Petoskey at Baldwin Michigan in July 1960

Chesapeake & Ohio E7A #96 on train 25, Grand Rapids–Petoskey on the former Pere Marquette, taking a wave at Baldwin, Michigan, in July 1960. Rick Burn photo.

Long-distance C&O passenger trains passed to Amtrak on May 1, 1971. Amtrak’s Cardinal still uses the mountain and New River main through West Virginia and Virginia.

B&O control, Chessie System, CSX

By the early 1960s the C&O was still earning money on coal when larger neighbors were not. The New York Central wanted the Baltimore & Ohio. So did the C&O. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved C&O control on December 31, 1962. Direct control closed February 4, 1963. It was not a merger of the two corporations. The C&O left the B&O standing, in part to keep a Maryland tax exemption and in part because B&O people would not have taken an erasure quietly. Western Maryland stock accumulated until C&O/B&O had the Wild Mary in 1967. A proposed C&O–N&W merger, announced in 1965 as a counter to Penn Central, never closed.

Yellow, blue, and vermilion GP40-2s with the Chess-“C” kitten silhouette began arriving in 1972. Chessie System, Inc. was incorporated in Virginia on February 26, 1973, and became parent of the C&O, B&O, and Western Maryland on June 15. Hays T. Watkins was the C&O president who wanted one public name for the three. The holding company is Chessie System.

Chesapeake and Ohio GP30 3008 GP35 3568 and another GP30 at the east end of Rockwell Yard on the Belt Railway of Chicago January 1965

Chesapeake & Ohio GP30 #3008, GP35 #3568, and another GP30 at the east end of Rockwell Yard on the Belt Railway of Chicago, Southwest Highway crossing, January 1965. Roger Puta photo.

Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries (the Family Lines) formed CSX Corporation on November 1, 1980. Trains Magazine’s CSX family tree is the date list used on the B&O page and here: Western Maryland into the B&O on May 1, 1983; B&O into the C&O on April 30, 1987; C&O dissolved into CSX Transportation on August 31, 1987.

What remains

CSX still runs the spine: Newport News to Richmond, the James River Line to Clifton Forge, the New River and Kanawha mains to Huntington, and the Cincinnati Division along the Ohio. Columbus–Toledo and the Russell coal terminal remain. The mountain Virginia Central west of Charlottesville is largely a short-line and Amtrak operation on CSX-owned iron. Most of the C&O of Indiana to Chicago came up in favor of the B&O. Lexington is mostly gone. Large pieces of the Pere Marquette were sold or abandoned; Grand Rapids–Chicago and other Michigan mains survive under CSX and short lines. Ludington car-ferry service outlived the C&O name.

The kitten, the Greenbrier at White Sulphur Springs, H-8s 1601 and 1604, Kanawhas on town display, 2-6-6-2s 1308 and 1309, and 4-8-4 614 are what the photographs remember. The corporation of July 1, 1878, is not.

Sources

Dixon, Thomas W., Jr. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway: A Concise History And Fact Book. Clifton Forge, Va.: Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society, 2012. Company narrative; Chessie kitten purchase
Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. Company history. Louisa/Virginia Central; Crozet tunnels; Hawks Nest January 28, 1873; 1878 Railway; Peninsula 1881; Ingalls/Stevens 1888; Hocking Valley and Sciotoville connection 1917–26; Van Sweringens; Young; Pere Marquette; Chessie System
Interstate Commerce Commission. Valuation Reports, Vol. 24, The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company. Louisa February 18, 1836; Virginia Central February 2, 1850; C&O Railroad August 31, 1868; receivership October 9, 1875; Railway July 1, 1878; construction years including Doswell–Richmond 1851, Covington–Huntington 1873, Richmond–Newport News 1882; Richmond & Alleghany January 20, 1890
Armitage, Laura. “Richmond & Alleghany Railroad.” 230.31 miles Richmond–Clifton Forge, 19.38-mile Lexington branch
Schafer, Mike. More Classic American Railroads. Osceola, Wis.: MBI. Huntington loses control, 1888, to Morgan/Vanderbilt
Trains Magazine CSX merger family tree. Chessie System, Inc., February 26 / June 15, 1973; WM into B&O May 1, 1983; B&O into C&O April 30, 1987; C&O into CSXT August 31, 1987
Classic Trains. “Remembering the Pere Marquette Railway.” Van Sweringen control; C&O–PM merger June 6, 1947
American Society of Civil Engineers / Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel Foundation. Tunnel 4,273 feet (Crozet 1858); replacement bore 1944
Live American-Rails B&O, Chessie System, Pere Marquette, steam-class, diesel-roster, M-1, and named-train pages as linked above

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