Norfolk Southern Railway

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This is the original Norfolk Southern Railway, not the later railroad system carrying the same famous name. Its roots reached back to the Elizabeth City & Norfolk Railroad, chartered in North Carolina in 1870. Track opened between Berkeley, Virginia, and Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in 1881, then pushed on to Edenton that same year. The operation became the Norfolk Southern Railroad Company on February 1, 1883.

The line spent its early decades doing what many ambitious railroads did best: expanding, reorganizing, entering receivership, and refusing to stay small. It became the Norfolk and Southern Railroad in 1891, was reorganized as the Norfolk Southern Railroad in 1910, and assembled routes across southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina. By 1920, its network reached its greatest reported extent, with 942 miles operated.

After another financial reorganization, the company emerged as the Norfolk Southern Railway on January 21, 1942. Its headquarters belonged to Norfolk for most of its independent life, before moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 29, 1961. Diesel power replaced steam in the 1950s; the last steam locomotive worked revenue service in January 1954. Progress: cleaner hands, fewer dramatic whistles.

Southern Railway acquired and merged the original Norfolk Southern into its system on January 1, 1974. Our Norfolk Southern Railway collection celebrates the compact, stubborn Carolina-and-Tidewater railroad whose name outlived the original company and still rumbles through American railroad lore.