Virginian Railway

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Created in 1907 from the Deepwater Railway and Tidewater Railway, the Virginian Railway was the Page-Rogers answer to a very profitable question: how do you get southern West Virginia coal to the sea without asking the established rail barons for directions? Colonel William Nelson Page supplied the plan; financier Henry Huttleston Rogers supplied the serious money.

The line was completed in 1909, running from the mountains and coalfields of West Virginia to Norfolk, Virginia. It hauled prized bituminous “smokeless” coal eastward and made the most of carefully engineered grades, tunnels, bridges, and later electric power. Small railroad, huge appetite for moving black rock.

The VGN’s general offices occupied the upper floors of Norfolk Terminal Station, while its trains and facilities stitched together coal country, Roanoke, and Hampton Roads. Passenger service ended in 1956. On December 1, 1959, the Virginian merged into its longtime rival, the Norfolk & Western Railway; duplicate routes and separate offices soon met the corporate broom.

Our Virginian Railway collection celebrates a compact coal-road legend: mountain grit, Tidewater muscle, electric-era swagger, and the kind of streamlined industrial confidence that looks exceptionally good on a shirt.