Southern Railway came into existence in 1894 through the combination of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, the Richmond and Danville system and the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad. The company owned two-thirds of the 4,400 miles of line it operated, and the rest was held through leases, operating agreements and stock ownership. Southern also controlled the Alabama Great Southern and the Georgia Southern and Florida, which operated separately, and it had an interest in the Central of Georgia. Additionally, the Southern Railway also agreed to lease the North Carolina Railroad Company, providing a critical connection from Virginia to the rest of the southeast via the Carolinas.
Southern’s first president, Samuel Spencer, drew more lines into Southern’s core system. During his 12-year term, the railway built new shops at Spencer, North Carolina(Spencer was where the main shops for the railway were located, now where the N.C. Transportation Museum is located), Atlanta, Georgia, and Knoxville, Tennessee, built and upgraded tracks, and purchased more equipment. He moved the company’s service away from an agricultural dependence on tobacco and cotton and centered its efforts on diversifying traffic and industrial development. Spencer was killed in a train wreck in 1906.
Even if you have heard of the Wreck of the Old 97 then you probably don’t know that the #97 fast mail train that crashed outside of Danville, Virginia on September 27, 1903, was a Southern Railway creation. It was on it’s way to Spencer, NC from Monroe, VA.
In response to the creation of the CSX Corporation in November 1980, the Southern Railway joined forces with the Norfolk and Western Railway and formed the Norfolk Southern Corporation in 1980 which began operations in 1982, further consolidating railroads in the eastern half of the United States. The Southern Railway was renamed Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982, as the Norfolk and Western Railway became a subsidiary to its system in 1982. The railroad then acquired more than half of Conrail on June 1, 1999.
Norfolk Southern Corporation covers most areas east of the Mississippi River excluding west Tennessee, New England, Florida, and northern Michigan. Here is a link to a coverage map on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_Southern_Railway#/media/File:Norfolk_Southern_Railway_system_map.svg.
More to come! 😀
