Page 9 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

AM&O depended on passengers and agriculture for business, the SVRR proposed
to derive the bulk of its profits by transporting Southwest Virginia’s coal and ore.
The road was originally supposed to make an east / west link with the Virginia &
Tennessee Railroad in Roanoke County, but in 1872, the company dropped that
proposed terminus and selected a closer and significantly cheaper link with the
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Waynesboro, Virginia.

Having barely begun surveying routes and started construction by 1873, the
ensuing financial panic halted significant progress on the line. By 1879, it consisted
of only forty-two miles of track between Shepherdstown, Maryland, and the
Shenandoah River.

Enoch W. Clark & Company, a private Philadelphia banking house and rival of the
firm that owned the SVRR, purchased the struggling railroad in June of that year.
The Clark company appointed junior associate and Philadelphia native Frederick J.
Kimball head of the construction firm responsible for completing the line, and with
the renewed financial support, tracks for the road again began moving north from
Waynesboro and south from Hagerstown. Like its previous owners, the Clark firm
anticipated using the road to haul coal, iron ore, and lime.

Indeed, in its new prospectus for the line, it claimed the SVRR would become “The
great mineral railroad of Virginia.” Not long after the purchase, the company
decided that it needed a terminus further south or west of Waynesboro, and by
1881, its agents had surveyed several possible routes into Southwest Virginia and
western North Carolina.

Mahone’s AM&O remained in receivership, and although it was turning a profit
hauling cotton, cattle, tobacco, lumber, and grain, it went up for auction in Richmond
in February 1881.

One of my primary reasons for this ‘history’ lesson is to set the groundwork for
recognizing the complexity of the rail lines competing for traffic in the area and the
list of ‘players’ in the field. Most notably is the necessary introductions of both
Frederick Kimball and Clarence Clark to the cast of characters that would play
major roles in the formation of the Norfolk and Western as well as in the decisions
that substantially ‘created’ Roanoke.

Clarence H. Clark, president of Enoch W. Clark & Company, had attempted to buy
the AM&O line a year earlier by purchasing its bonds from English investors, and at
the sale, he ran the bids up to $14,000,000 before closing the deal. The purchase put
the AM&O in the Clark company fold, giving the firm an east / west trunk road through
Virginia as well as an obvious junction line for its Shenandoah Valley Railroad.

It was at this point in history that the AM&O Railroad ceased to exist as Clark,
anticipating a completely different cartage mix from cotton, cattle and tobacco as well
as recognizing the better range of service than Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio made
an important decision. To give better notice as to its intentions, Clark at this point
christened his newly purchased railroad, The Norfolk and Western (N&W).