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Norfolk & Western Railway: Map, Logo, Rosters, History

Last revised: October 12, 2026

By: Adam Burns

The Norfolk & Western carried coal from the Pocahontas seams to tidewater, and it kept building steam locomotives at Roanoke after most American railroads had stopped. The line began as the City Point Railroad, opened on September 7, 1838, from Petersburg to City Point on the James River, the place now called Hopewell. The company this page follows took the name Norfolk & Western Railway on September 24, 1896. On June 1, 1982, it and the Southern Railway came under the Norfolk Southern Corporation. On December 31, 1990, the Norfolk & Western became a subsidiary of the Southern, and the Southern took the name Norfolk Southern Railway.

The mark was NW. The slogan was Precision Transportation. Headquarters were at Roanoke. Before the expansions of 1964 the railroad covered a little more than 2,100 route miles, in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Ohio, and coal was the reason the map looked that way. The locomotives are on their own pages: steam built since 1898, and the all-time diesel roster.

Norfolk & Western 2-8-8-2 No. 2103, class Y-4a, at Roanoke, Virginia, circa 1950. Fred Byerly photo. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · City Point to the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio · Pocahontas coal · The 1955 map · Roanoke steam · Diesels and 1964 · Passenger trains · O. Winston Link · Norfolk Southern

At a glance

The Norfolk & Western Railway logo. Author’s work.

The Norfolk & Western Railway’s late-era “Hamburger” logo. Author’s work.

Three railroads, and William Mahone’s consolidation

The General Assembly chartered the City Point Railroad in 1836. It opened on September 7, 1838, a short line from Petersburg down to the James. The Southside Railroad carried that route on through Petersburg and finished it to Lynchburg in 1854. West of Lynchburg, the Virginia & Tennessee was completed on October 1, 1856, 204 miles to Bristol. East of Petersburg, the Norfolk & Petersburg was organized in 1853 and opened on September 1, 1858.

William Mahone, the Southside’s engineer and a Confederate general, drew the three companies into one. On November 12, 1870, the Norfolk & Petersburg, the Southside, and the Virginia & Tennessee became the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio, 408 miles from Norfolk to Bristol. The hard years broke the AM&O. On February 9, 1881, it was sold under foreclosure to E. W. Clark & Co. of Philadelphia and renamed the Norfolk & Western Railroad. Frederick J. Kimball, a Clark partner, was the new company’s first vice president.

The railroad Kimball helped direct was still a 5-foot line. On June 1, 1886, the Norfolk & Western, with the other broad-gauge roads of the South, changed to 4 feet 8½ inches. At daybreak freight and passenger trains stopped. By early afternoon the rails had been respiked. Nelson Harris, writing the railroad’s photographic history, recorded a company historian’s judgment that it was the greatest one-day change the property ever saw.

The seam Kimball went to see

Kimball was convinced that southwestern Virginia held a great bituminous seam, and he acted on it. The railroad took up the unfinished New River line and pushed it into the Flat Top field. On March 12, 1883, the first car of Pocahontas coal was loaded at Pocahontas, Virginia. Regular traffic on the New River Division to Bluefield began on May 21, 1883. Jim Cox, in Rails Across Dixie, gives the first year’s loadings as 54,500 tons, and about a million tons by 1887. Coal pier No. 1 at Lambert’s Point, on the Elizabeth River at Norfolk, opened on March 12, 1885. From then on the railroad’s business had a direction: tipple to tidewater, with a second stream of coal moving west to Columbus.

The rest of the pre-1964 map was filled in around that coal road. The Shenandoah Valley Railroad reached Roanoke in 1882 and was acquired in December 1890, which is how the N&W entered Hagerstown and met the Western Maryland, the Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore & Ohio. The Scioto Valley was sold to the N&W in 1890 and brought Columbus. The Ohio Extension, Elkhorn to Kenova, was completed on September 25, 1892. The Cincinnati & Eastern reached Portsmouth on August 25, 1884, was reorganized in 1891 as the Cincinnati, Portsmouth & Virginia, and was absorbed in 1901, the N&W’s entry to Cincinnati. The Clinch Valley Extension was begun in 1887 and finished in 1890, Bluefield to Norton. The Lynchburg & Durham was completed in 1890, leased in 1892, and absorbed in 1896. The Roanoke & Southern was leased in 1892 and purchased in 1896, the line to Winston-Salem. In 1911 the Winston-Salem Southbound, a joint line with the Atlantic Coast Line, carried that reach farther south.

A foreclosure in the middle of the 1890s produced the company name that lasted. The Norfolk & Western Railway was organized on September 24, 1896. Roanoke was already the operating capital. The shops there had built locomotives from 1883, paused for about ten years, and resumed in January 1900 with class W1 Consolidation No. 830. What came out of those shops after 1930 is the railroad’s other reputation, beside the coal.

Eric Grubb, writing “Coal Supports the Norfolk & Western” in Trains for November 1947, described a property that had put its earnings back into the plant. By the late 1940s, 72 percent of the network was laid with rail of 130 pounds or heavier. Frank Shaffer, in “Stuart Saunders and His Moneymaking Machine” (Trains, February 1963), put centralized traffic control on 46.7 percent of the railroad by 1958, with automatic block signals on the rest. Mike Schafer, in Classic American Railroads, Volume III, found coal still accounting for more than 60 percent of the tonnage in the early 1980s, on the eve of the combination with the Southern. The grades that made the coal expensive to move were Elkhorn, about 2 percent before it was relocated, Alleghany at about 1 percent, and Blue Ridge at 1.2 percent.

Elkhorn electrified, then bypassed

From 1915 until June 26, 1950, electric helpers worked the Elkhorn grade west of Bluefield. The overhead was 11,000 volts at 25 cycles. Twelve LC-1 boxcabs, and four LC-2s added in 1925, coupled onto the coal trains the compound Mallets had been shoving. A line relocation opened on June 26, 1950, a double-track bypass that cut the grade to about 1.4 percent, and the electrics came off. The Virginian, absorbed on December 1, 1959, brought a second electrification, west of Roanoke, and ten EL-C rectifier locomotives, 301–310, built in October 1956. Those ten went to the New Haven in 1962 as class EF-4. They are electrics, and they are off the diesel count. The class page is the Virginian EL-C.

An official 1955 system map of the Norfolk & Western Railway. Author’s collection.

The 1955 map is the railroad before the great enlargement: Norfolk and Lambert’s Point at one end, Cincinnati and Columbus at the other, the Clinch Valley running off to Norton, the Durham line, the Shenandoah Valley line to Hagerstown, and Winston-Salem to the south. Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo, and Detroit arrive with the Nickel Plate and the Wabash in 1964.

What Roanoke built

Within the trade the Norfolk & Western is remembered as a steam railroad that designed its own power and then maintained it harder than the builders it had stopped buying from. The modern freight engine was a compound 2-8-8-2, the Y classes, for the coal drags on the Pocahontas Division. The simple 2-6-6-4, class A, 43 engines numbered 1200–1242 and built at Roanoke from 1936 to 1950, took the time freights and could take a passenger train. The streamlined 4-8-4, class J, took the named trains. The 4-8-2s, class K, shared that work. Specifications for those three families stay on their own pages: class Y, class A, class J, class K, and the earlier 2-6-6-2, class Z.

A Norfolk & Western 2-6-6-2 (Z-1b) and a 2-6-6-4 (class A) at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1956. Clarence Cade photo.

The post-1898 construction total is 1,266 locomotives, counted on the steam roster. Roanoke’s last reciprocating locomotive for common-carrier service was 0-8-0 No. 244, class S1a, finished in December 1953. Class Y6b No. 2200, completed in April 1952, had been the last steam locomotive built in the United States for road freight. The experimental steam turbine-electric Jawn Henry, No. 2300, class TE-1, a Baldwin-Westinghouse machine of May 1954, is a separate story, told with the roster and on the Jawn Henry page. It was scrapped in December 1957. The Chesapeake & Ohio’s M-1 turbines were a different set of machines, built for that railroad.

0-8-0 No. 218, class S1a, at work in Roanoke, Virginia, circa 1950. Fred Byerly photo. American-Rails.com collection.

During the 1940s the railroad built what it called a lubritorium, a lighted pit where a locomotive could be inspected, lubricated, and turned for the next run in 90 minutes or less. The buildings stood at Shaffer’s Crossing in Roanoke, at Bluefield, Williamson, and Portsmouth, with a modified one at Pulaski. Between May 1952 and April 1954 the shops also turned out 91 auxiliary water tenders, so a road engine could run farther between plugs. Robert H. Smith, president through the end of March 1958, kept faith with that plant. The diesel’s advantage in labor and in parts was already plain.

The last road steam was class Y6b No. 2190, on a mine run out of Williamson, West Virginia. The fire was dropped in the early hours of May 7, 1960. O. Winston Link wrote that the boiler cooled that day. The Norfolk & Western was the last large eastern coal road in regular steam. The Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range’s Yellowstones worked into July 1960, and the Illinois Central also finished with steam in 1960. No. 611, the 1950 Roanoke 4-8-4 that survives, was built after the Chesapeake & Ohio’s L-2-A and after Baldwin’s 1949 H-6s. Two engines remain at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke, in the former N&W freight station at 303 Norfolk Avenue SW, both sections of it dating from 1918: No. 611, and class A No. 1218, built at Roanoke in 1943 and not operational. The City of Roanoke transferred both to the museum on April 2, 2012. Confirm hours before a visit. The excursions behind 611 are on that engine’s own page. The specification card is on the class J page.

Saunders, the first road diesels, and the map of 1964

The first road diesels were four GP9s, 10–13, delivered in September 1955 and later renumbered 710–713, and four RS-3s, 300–303, delivered in September and October 1955. Stuart T. Saunders became president on April 1, 1958. Rush Loving, Jr., in The Men Who Loved Trains, records that Saunders had no further use for the steam locomotive. Diesels took the Powhatan Arrow, the Pocahontas, and the Cavalier in July 1958. The railroad specified high short hoods, and it kept that practice into the second generation. Locomotives built new for the N&W total 1,464, from those 1955 orders through six SD50S units in December 1980 and the last C36-7s in 1982. Merger roads, two leased commuter cabs, and the yard slugs are counted apart from that figure, on the diesel roster.

SD45 No. 1713 receives attention on March 4, 1977. The location is not recorded. Vincent Porreca photo. American-Rails.com collection.

The Virginian was absorbed on December 1, 1959. The Chesapeake Western, Elkton–Harrisonburg–Staunton, had already been acquired in 1954 and remained a subsidiary. In 1962 the Atlantic & Danville was taken over and operated separately as the Norfolk, Franklin & Danville. The enlargement that changed the map came at 12:01 a.m. on October 16, 1964. The Nickel Plate was absorbed, and the N&W assumed the Nickel Plate’s lease of the Wheeling & Lake Erie. The Wabash was leased. The Pittsburgh & West Virginia was leased, under an agreement of July 12, 1962. The Akron, Canton & Youngstown was acquired. The Pennsylvania’s Sandusky line, and the Sandusky coal docks, came with the package as the physical link between the old N&W and the Nickel Plate. The Nickel Plate page and the Wabash page carry those railroads’ own histories.

GP40 No. 1329 and a former Wabash caboose at the Chicago & North Western’s Wood Street Yard, Chicago, on June 11, 1966. Marty Bernard photo.

The N&W ordered no cab units of its own. The F7s and E8s in its paint came with the Wabash lease and were renumbered into the 3600s and 3800s.

F7A No. 3666, former Wabash 1159-A, at Sloan, New York, on December 11, 1975. Warren Calloway collection.

On July 1, 1968, the Delaware & Hudson and the Erie Lackawanna were placed under Dereco, Inc. Dereco was a holding company. The two railroads kept their own names. The Erie Lackawanna passed to Conrail in 1976. A merger with the Chesapeake & Ohio was announced on August 31, 1965, and canceled on April 22, 1971. The Illinois Terminal was purchased on September 1, 1981. The Illinois Terminal and the Akron, Canton & Youngstown ended their separate corporate existence in 1982. The Pittsburgh & West Virginia lease was subleased to the new Wheeling & Lake Erie on May 17, 1990, eight years after Norfolk Southern already existed.

A small passenger business, carefully run

David P. Morgan, in “Fine New Feathers” (Trains, February 1950), put passenger revenue at less than 3 percent of the total after the war. The trains were still a point of pride. The Pocahontas, trains 3 and 4, ran from November 1926 to May 1, 1971, Norfolk to Cincinnati, with Columbus cars connecting at Portsmouth. Eastbound No. 4 on May 1, 1971, was the last regularly scheduled Norfolk & Western passenger train. The Powhatan Arrow, trains 25 and 26, ran from April 28, 1946, to May 23, 1969, Norfolk to Cincinnati. Its new lightweight cars entered revenue service on December 12, 1949. The Cavalier was the other Norfolk–Cincinnati train. All three wore maroon and gold in the streamliner years, and the J handled them until the GP9s took over in July 1958.

4-8-4 No. 612 with train 15, the westbound Cavalier, crossing Friendship Road outside Shawsville, Virginia, on October 23, 1952.

A pair of Norfolk & Western GP9s assigned to passenger service, at Roanoke, Virginia, in October 1965. Wiley Bryan photo. Warren Calloway collection.

The through trains with the Southern and the Pennsylvania used the N&W only between Lynchburg and Bristol. The Birmingham Special ran New York to Birmingham. The Pelican ran New York to New Orleans. The Tennessean ran New York to Memphis. The Cannon Ball was a Norfolk–New York train with the Atlantic Coast Line and the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac. The N&W’s own portion was Norfolk to Petersburg.

O. Winston Link

Ogle Winston Link, known as O. Winston Link, made the last years of this steam railroad his subject. He had studied at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. His first night photograph of the N&W was made near Waynesboro, Virginia, on January 21, 1955. Over the next few years he made hundreds of photographs, many of them at night, with the lighting arranged in advance and a single chance at the exposure. Hotshot Eastbound, a class A passing a drive-in theater at Iaeger, West Virginia, is the picture people name first: the locomotive is the subject, and so are the people watching the film. The photographs on this page are other men’s work. Link’s are a separate body of pictures. He died on January 30, 2001. The O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke opened on January 10, 2004. Confirm hours before a visit.

Two steps to Norfolk Southern

The combination with the Southern was a response to CSX. Norfolk Southern Corporation, the holding company, took effect on June 1, 1982. Robert B. Claytor, the N&W’s president, became the first chief executive. Harold H. Hall, of the Southern, became the first president. The two railroads remained separate subsidiaries. On December 31, 1990, the Norfolk & Western became a subsidiary of the Southern Railway, and the Southern took the name Norfolk Southern Railway. Trains, in its merger family tree, states both dates that way.

In 1998 Norfolk Southern and CSX divided Conrail. Norfolk Southern took 58 percent. The Pocahontas main line, the tidewater piers, and the Roanoke shops passed into that system. Coal is no longer the share of the tonnage it was in 1947, and it is still the freight the old railroad was built to move. The locomotive record is the two rosters linked above.

Related reading

• Norfolk & Western steam roster · Norfolk & Western diesel roster
• Class J · Class A · Class Y · Class Z · Class K
• No. 611 · No. 1218 · Jawn Henry · Virginia Museum of Transportation
• Powhatan Arrow · Pocahontas · Birmingham Special · Pelican · Tennessean
• Virginian · Nickel Plate · Wabash · Norfolk Southern

Sources

• Norfolk & Western Historical Society, corporate timeline. Sale of the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio on February 9, 1881. Shenandoah Valley completed to Roanoke in 1882. First Pocahontas coal, March 12, 1883. Regular traffic to Bluefield, May 21, 1883. Cincinnati & Eastern at Portsmouth, August 25, 1884. Lambert’s Point pier No. 1, March 12, 1885. Gauge change, June 1, 1886. Clinch Valley, 1887–1890
• Nelson Harris, Images of Rail: Norfolk and Western Railway, as cited by the Virginia Room, Roanoke. The June 1, 1886, respiking, finished by early afternoon, and the judgment that it was the property’s greatest one-day change
• Jim Cox, Rails Across Dixie: A History of Passenger Trains in the American South. First-year Pocahontas loadings of 54,500 tons, and about a million tons by 1887
• Eric Grubb, “Coal Supports the Norfolk & Western,” Trains, November 1947. Seventy-two percent of the network in rail of 130 pounds or heavier by the late 1940s
• Frank Shaffer, “Stuart Saunders and His Moneymaking Machine,” Trains, February 1963. Centralized traffic control on 46.7 percent of the railroad by 1958
• David P. Morgan, “Fine New Feathers,” Trains, February 1950. Passenger revenue under 3 percent of the postwar total
• Mike Schafer, Classic American Railroads, Volume III. Coal still more than 60 percent of tonnage in the early 1980s
• Rush Loving, Jr., The Men Who Loved Trains. Stuart T. Saunders and the end of the steam policy
• George H. Drury, Guide to North American Steam Locomotives, revised edition, pages 255–261. Grades, the lubritorium in 90 minutes or less, the shops, and the class grid. The grid is transcribed, and corrected, on the steam roster
• Trains staff, “Norfolk Southern merger family tree,” June 2, 2006. Norfolk Southern Corporation, June 1, 1982. On December 31, 1990, the Norfolk & Western became a subsidiary of the Southern, and the Southern took the name Norfolk Southern Railway
• Norfolk Southern Corporation, as reported by Progressive Railroading, June 2022. Robert B. Claytor, first chief executive. Harold H. Hall, first president
• Norfolk & Western Historical Society account of May 7, 1960, and O. Winston Link’s note that the boiler of Y6b 2190 cooled that day. Link’s first N&W night photograph, January 21, 1955, near Waynesboro. His death, January 30, 2001. O. Winston Link Museum, opened January 10, 2004
• City of Roanoke, transfer of Nos. 611 and 1218 to the Virginia Museum of Transportation, April 2, 2012. The museum occupies the former N&W freight station, 303 Norfolk Avenue SW, both sections built in 1918

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    Davenport, Rock Island and North Western Railway, the DRI Line. Clinton to East Moline across the Crescent Bridge. Burlington and Milwaukee. Merged into the Soo Line on June 29, 1995. Eighteen diesels…

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40. Chicago Great Western Steam Roster (Post 1900)

    Oct 20, 26 11:17 PM

    
    Chicago Great Western steam locomotives built or rebuilt since 1900. Drury's class grid. 320 frames, each once. The quantity column prints 376 because a rebuild is listed again. Last steam in the reti…

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41. Chicago Great Western Diesel Roster (All-Time)

    Oct 20, 26 10:47 PM

    
    All-time diesel roster of the Chicago Great Western. 157 frames, each counted once. Serials and builder order numbers included. Steam was gone by 1950. The 1963 glance figure of 141 is one year's flee…

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42. Chicago Great Western Railway: Map, Photos, History, Rosters

    Oct 20, 26 10:43 PM

    
    The Chicago Great Western, the Corn Belt Route, linked Chicago, the Twin Cities, Omaha, and Kansas City from September 27, 1885, until the Chicago & North Western merger at 12:01 a.m. on July 1, 1968…

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43. Chicago, South Shore & South Bend Railroad: "The South Shore Line"

    Oct 20, 26 05:48 PM

    
    Chicago South Shore & South Bend, the South Shore Line, from the 1901 Air Line through Samuel Insull's 1925 rebuild, the orange cars, the 800s, and the railroad NICTD and Anacostia still run.

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44. Northwestern Virginia Railroad: Map, History, Timetable

    Oct 20, 26 04:18 PM

    
    Northwestern Virginia Railroad, chartered February 14, 1851, Grafton to Parkersburg, 104 miles. Opened May 1, 1857. Foreclosure sale February 15, 1865, as the Parkersburg Branch. Twenty-three tunnels…

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45. "Exposition Flyer" (Train): Consist, Timetable, History

    Oct 20, 26 03:29 PM

    
    Exposition Flyer, Chicago to Oakland, June 10, 1939 to March 20, 1949. Burlington, Rio Grande, and Western Pacific. Heavyweight cars, then diesels and a vista-dome. Replaced by the California Zephyr.

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46. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, "The Omaha Road"

    Oct 20, 26 02:13 PM

    
    The Omaha Road, reporting mark CMO. Formed May 26, 1880. North Western management on December 16, 1882. Leased January 1, 1957. Class K-1 No. 183 and the sublettered diesels.

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47. Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad: Map, Rosters, History

    Oct 20, 26 01:17 PM

    
    Chicago and Western Indiana, chartered June 5, 1879. Five equal owners, Dearborn Station, and two main lines. Dolton suburban mile 16.6. Fifteen diesels. Railroad service ended in 1994. The Illinois c…

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48. Railroad Tell-Tales: Protecting The Brakeman

    Oct 20, 26 12:58 PM

    
    Railroad tell-tales: hanging ropes that warned a man on a freight-car roof of a low bridge or tunnel. The 1897 bridge-warning report, the 1905 Wisconsin statute, retainers, and why the roof walk outla…

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49. Chicago & North Western Steam Roster (Post 1900)

    Oct 20, 26 12:54 PM

    
    Chicago & North Western steam locomotives built since 1900, and the Omaha Road list beside it. Drury's parent quantity column sums to 1,445, with four rows left blank. The Omaha Road column sums to 24…

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50. Chicago & North Western Diesel Roster (All-Time)

    Oct 20, 26 12:49 PM

    
    All-time diesel roster of the Chicago & North Western. 2,494 frames, each counted once, including Chicago Great Western, Minneapolis & St. Louis, and Omaha Road units that received North Western numbe…

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