Manassas Gap Railroad
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Manassas Gap Railroad was an intrastate railroad in Virginia. It was chartered by the Virginia General Assembly in 1850.
With financial assistance from the Virginia Board of Public Works, construction was started westward in 1851 from a junction with the Orange and Alexandria Railroad (O&A) at Tudor Hall in Prince William County (a location which the railroads called Manassas Junction) toward Front Royal and through Manassas Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Shenandoah Valley. It was completed to Strasburg in 1854. Building south up the Shenandoah Valley, the railroad reached Mount Jackson in Shenandoah County in 1859. However, the beginning of the American Civil War ended construction, and conflicts during the War destroyed much of the railroad.
Part of the original plan for the railroad included a branch through Loudoun County to connect to Harpers Ferry and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Financial troubles and the Civil War kept the line from ever being completed and opened.
After the end of hostilities in 1865, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) gained control of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, and in 1867, the Manassas Gap Railroad as well, merging them to form the Orange, Alexandria and Manassas Railroad. The damaged portions of each were repaired, and new construction resumed up the Shenandoah Valley from Mt. Jackson, reaching Harrisonburg in 1868. (Tudor Hall was renamed Manassas and became an incorporated town in 1873).
The B&O also acquired or built additional mileage to connect its east-west main line at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, with Winchester, Virginia, and Strasburg, and south past Harrisonburg to eventually reach Lexington. However, eventually, financial difficulties prevented the B&O from its ultimate goal of reaching Salem, where it could connect with the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T), which became part of William Mahone's Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O) in 1870. The AM&O extended about 400 miles across the southern tier of Virginia from Norfolk, to Bristol.
In 1881, the B&O's plan to reach all the way south to Salem effectively became moot. In that year, the AM&O, in receivership since the mid 1870s, was acquired by Philadelphia-based interests competing with the B&O who also controlled the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, a parallel line also building up the Shenandoah Valley from the Potomac River which thereby achieved the connection with the original V&T near Salem the B&O had sought. At the junction, the newly created Norfolk and Western turned a tiny flag stop named Big Lick into the new railroad city of Roanoke, Virginia, a few miles northeast of Salem.
In 1896, most of the original Manassas Gap Railroad became part of the Southern Railway system, and eventually became an important part of the modern-day Norfolk Southern rail system.
