Portsmouth and Weldon Railroad
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Portsmouth and Weldon Railroad was organized in 1833 to extend from the area of the rapids of the Roanoke River at its fall line near Weldon, North Carolina to Portsmouth, Virginia. The goal was to provide a link for shipments of goods originating on the Roanoke River and its canal system from points west to reach port facilities in the Norfolk area on the harbor of Hampton Roads.
For such traffic, Norfolk and Portsmouth were fiercely competitive with Petersburg, which had access to the navigable portion of the James River at City Point via about 8 miles of the Appomattox River below its fall line, and was also planning rail service from its south and west.
The new line was first completed in 1835. (It was to be more than 20 years before the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad was built by William Mahone). Some of the intermediate points in Virginia were Boykins, Franklin, Carrsville, and Suffolk. Lumber was the largest commodity originating along the line, and the facilities of the Camp Company's lumber and paper mill operations in Franklin were located there due to the new railroad.
The Portsmouth and Weldon was the first railroad to reach the Norfolk area, which eventually became a busy point for many railroads. Through several financial reorganizations, and refinancing by the Virginia Board of Public Works in 1838, it was variously known as the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad and the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad.
One of the road's builders from the mid-1830s' was Walter Gwynn, who, during the American Civil War, became a Confederate General assigned to take charge of the defenses of Norfolk, which were held by the southern troops for about a year in 1861-62.
In the 1880s, the Seaboard and Roanoke became part of the Seaboard Air Line Railway system, which was extended through Petersburg to reach Richmond to the north and covered the southeastern states to reach Florida. In 1967, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad merged with its arch-rival, the Atlantic Coast Line railroad to form Seaboard Coast Line Industries (SCL). SCL merged with the Chessie System in 1980, to form CSX Transportation, which is currently one of seven major Class 1 railroads operating in North America in the 21st century.
[edit] Suffolk Passenger Station
The 1885 Seaboard Passenger Station at Suffolk, Virginia was shared with the coal hauling Virginian Railway when it was built adjacently in the early 20th century. Featuring a brick octagonal cupola for its telegraph operators, the station was restored and now houses a railroad museum, operating model trains based upon of Suffolk around 1907, and a gift shop. [1]
