The Virginia Southern Railroad is a

shortline railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

division of the

North Carolina and Virginia Railroad The North Carolina and Virginia Railroad is a short-line railroad operating in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Virginia. Formed in 1987 to operate a CSX Transportation branch, the NCVA operates of track. It is a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyo ...

, a subsidiary of the

Genesee & Wyoming Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W) is an American short line railroad holding company, that owns or maintains an interest in 122 railroads in the United States, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom and formerly Australia. It operates ...

, with rights to operate of track between

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31 ...

connections at

Oxford, North Carolina Oxford is a town in Granville County, North Carolina, United States, with a population of 8,628 as of the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Granville County. History The town's history dates to 1761, when local legislator Samuel Benton built ...

and

Burkeville, Virginia Burkeville is a town in Nottoway County, Virginia, United States. The population was 432 at the 2010 census. The source of the town name is disputed. The town is located on the crossroads of U.S. Routes 360 and 460. Businesses in the small tow ...

. The southernmost segment between

Clarksville, Virginia Clarksville is a town in Mecklenburg county in the U.S. state of Virginia, near the southern border of the commonwealth. The population was 1,139 at the 2010 census. Since the town has numerous buildings of the 18th-, 19th-, and early 20th-centu ...

and Oxford is out of service. The line was built by the Oxford and Clarksville Railroad, Clarksville and North Carolina Railroad,

Atlantic and Danville Railway The Atlantic and Danville Railway was a Class I railroad which operated in Virginia and North Carolina. The company was founded in 1882 and opened its mainline between Portsmouth, Virginia and Danville, Virginia in 1890. The Southern Railway lea ...

, Richmond and Mecklenburg Railroad, and

Richmond and Danville Railroad The Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) Company was a railroad that operated independently from 1847 until 1894, first in the U.S. state of Virginia, and later on of track in nine states. Chartered on March 9, 1847, the railroad completed its ...

, all predecessors of the Southern Railway (except for the short piece of A&D, which left the Southern system for the

Norfolk and Western Railway The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precisio ...

Interstate Commerce Commission The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was a regulatory agency in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminat ...

, 37 Val. Rep. 1 (1931): Valuation Docket No. 556, Southern Railway Company et al. and in November 1988 successor Norfolk Southern leased it to the new Virginia Southern Railroad as the first spin-off in its

Thoroughbred Shortline Program The Thoroughbred Shortline Program was a system of shortline creation devised by Norfolk Southern in the late 1980s. It involved an alternative to the typical practice of a Class I railroad selling rail lines outright to shortlines in the post-Sta ...

.Edward A. Lewis, American Shortline Railway Guide, 5th Edition,

Kalmbach Publishing Kalmbach Media (formerly Kalmbach Publishing Co.) is an American publisher of books and magazines, many of them railroad-related, located in Waukesha, Wisconsin. History The company's first publication was ''The Model Railroader'', which be ...

, 1996, pp. 226, 323 The NCVA and VSRR were previously owned by

Railtex RailTex was a transportation holding company that specialized in owning and operating short line railroads across North America. Based in San Antonio, Texas, the public company was a leader in making unprofitable lines shed by Class I railroads ...

and

RailAmerica RailAmerica, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Florida, was a holding company of a number of short-line railroads and regional railroads in the United States and Canada. In 2007, RailAmerica was acquired by Fortress Investment Group. Before that, it t ...

, and is now operated by the

Buckingham Branch Railroad Buckingham Branch Railroad is a Class III short-line railroad operating over 275 miles (443 km) of historic and strategic trackage in Central Virginia. Sharing overhead traffic with CSX and Amtrak, the company's headquarters are in Dill ...

References

External links

Official websitemap
Virginia railroads North Carolina railroads Switching and terminal railroads RailAmerica Spin-offs of the Norfolk Southern Railway Railway companies established in 1988 {{US-rail-company-stub

See also

References

External links