Official predecessors •
Richmond, York River and Chesapeake Railroad (1894) •
Richmond and Danville Railroad (1894) •
Memphis and Charleston Railroad (1894) •
East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway (1894) •
Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway (1894)
Creation and independent status , formerly located at
Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street NW in the early 1900s The pioneering
South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, Southern's earliest predecessor line and one of the
first railroads in the United States, was chartered on December 19, 1827, and ran the nation's first regularly scheduled
steam-powered passenger train – the wood-burning
Best Friend of Charleston – over a six-mile section out of
Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1830. The
Western North Carolina Railroad was halted because voters were angry about that law allowed purchasers of private bonds to have the train tracks veer to their towns. The provision of the laws that allowed this was not repealed until
Reconstruction. Rail expansion in the South was also halted with the start of the
Civil War. The
Battle of Shiloh, the
Siege of Corinth and the
Second Battle of Corinth in 1862 were motivated by the importance of the Memphis and Charleston line, the only east–west rail link across the
Confederacy. The
Chickamauga Campaign for
Chattanooga, Tennessee, was also motivated by the importance of its rail connections to the Memphis and Charleston and other lines. Also, in 1862, the
Richmond and York River Railroad, which operated from the
Pamunkey River at
West Point, Virginia, to
Richmond, Virginia, was a major focus of
George McClellan's Peninsular Campaign, which culminated in the
Seven Days Battles and devastated the tiny rail link. Late in the war, the
Richmond and Danville Railroad was the
Confederacy's last link to Richmond, and transported
Jefferson Davis and his cabinet to
Danville, Virginia, just before the fall of
Richmond in April 1865. Known as the "First Railroad War", the
Civil War left the South's railroads and economy devastated. Most of the railroads, however, were repaired, reorganized and operated again.
Convict lease was a near continuation of slavery as charges were often only applied to people of African descent. Five-hundred
African Americans were assigned to provide backbreaking labor on the
Western North Carolina Railroad. Men were shipped to and from the worksite in iron shackles and around twenty were drowned in the
Tuckasegee River weighted down by their shackles. Southern's first president,
Samuel Spencer, brought more lines into Southern's organized system. During his 12-year term, the railway built new shops at
Spencer, North Carolina,
Knoxville, Tennessee, and
Atlanta, Georgia, upgraded tracks, and purchased more equipment. After the line from
Meridian, Mississippi, to
New Orleans, Louisiana, was acquired in 1916 under Southern's president
Fairfax Harrison, the railroad had assembled the 8,000-mile, 13-state system that lasted for almost half a century. The
Central of Georgia became part of the system in 1963, and the former
Norfolk Southern Railway was acquired in 1974. said the refusal to add routes through merger was a mistake, especially the decision not to add a connecting route to Chicago. The Southern tried to gain access to Chicago by targeting the
Monon Railroad and the
Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad but both those railroads went to Southern's competitor, the
Louisville and Nashville Railroad. A decade later Crane tried to rectify the situation by merging with the
Illinois Central Railroad. When that failed, he petitioned the
Interstate Commerce Commission to give Southern the old Monon routes and the old Atlantic Coast Line route from Jacksonville to Tampa by way of Orlando among other properties as a condition of the I.C.C.'s approval of the Seaboard Coast Line – Chessie System merger in 1979. While the request was supported by the I.C.C.'s Enforcement Bureau, it was ultimately unsuccessful.
Becoming part of the Norfolk Southern Corporation 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 as the Norfolk and Western Railway became a subsidiary to its system on June 1, 1982. The railroad then acquired more than half of
Conrail on June 1, 1999. == Notable features ==