Virginia Room Digital Collection

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The Virginia Room Digital Collection includes photographs, oral histories, books, pamphlets and finding aids to items in the Virginia Room. Continue to check back for new additions.

Browse Items (18 total)

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Loaded coal cars awaiting shipment from an N&W coal tipple. Note the different grades of coal being loaded. During World War II, the United States Navy almost exclusively used N&W coal for its Atlantic fleet.

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Diesel Engine No. 322 pulls a consist of coal through Virginia. The switch to diesel was difficult for N&W given its commercial investment in coal.

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This is the view across the flat yard at Norfolk, Virginia. Hoppers would wait in the yard to be emptied.

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Engine No. 2146 pulls a load of coal. In the 1940s, N&W served the following seven coal districts: Kenova, Thacker, Tug River, Pocahontas, Clinch Valley 1 & 2, and Radford.

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This consist of coal includes some hoppers from the Virginia Railway, which had been acquired by N&W in 1959.

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Norfolk & Western always kept a spare for every part necessary to cargo operations.

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Loaded coal cars await their turn at the car-dumping machine. Upwards of 400 cars of coal are required to fill the large colliers.

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This photograph shows one of the largest loads of coal cargo on a single ship at Lambert's Point. A total of 493 carloads were required.

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A hopper car loaded with coal coasts down the "hump" incline toward classification tracks at the Portsmouth, Ohio freight yard. This car is half-way through the master retarder. The scale house and assistant yard master's office are located in the…

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Freight cars line up outside a coal-cleaning and prep plant near Gary, West Virginia. The N&W relied heavily on many of the larger coal mines and facilities throughout West Virginia.

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Car yardmen at Kimball, West Virginia. As the coal mines opened, the number of men employeed by N&W soared, bringing economic opportunity to many West Virginia families.

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Engine No. 53 and her crew excavate for new track near Bluefield, West Virginia. N&W pioneered and financed early coal production in the mountains of West Virginia and carved the rail beds that allowed the "black gold" to move east.

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N&W hoppers at a West Virginia coal tipple are loaded for their eastbound trip to Lamberts Point near Norfolk. In 1883, N&W moved nearly 106,000 tons of coal. A century later, N&W moved 75 million tons annually.

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Coal quickly became N&W's leading freight commodity. Here an employee loads an N&W hopper with coal.

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At Coal Pier 4 at Norfolk, hoppers are dumped into pier cars which carry coal to the loading shutes. In the background is a portion of N&W's 12,000 car classification and storage yards.

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This aerial view shows the N&W coal piers at Lamberts Point. Coal Pier 4 (center) was built in 1914. At the time of its initial construction, the pier was 1,200 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 90 feet above the water. It could empty 600 cars per day.…

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Coal Pier 4 at Lamberts Point. The pier served N&W for nearly half a century.

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A hopper with coal is ready to go. 1970 was the peak for N&W coal traffic, when the railway carried 90.6 million tons of coal. While coal was profitable, it was not always a source of revenue. Floods, miner strikes, and other labor disputes cut…
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