the Roanoke & Southern Railway was quickly acquired by the Norfolk and Western Railroad, becoming its Pumpkin Vine line
Source: Library of Congress, Railway mail map of Virginia (Earl P. Hopkins, 1910)
the Roanoke & Southern Railway was quickly acquired by the Norfolk and Western Railroad, becoming its Pumpkin Vine line
Source: Library of Congress, Railway mail map of Virginia (Earl P. Hopkins, 1910)
The Roanoke & Southern Railway connected the new city of Roanoke to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The 122 miles of track were completed in December, 1891.
The Shenandoah Valley Railroad had originally contemplated building the connection. After that railroad was merged into the Norfolk and Western Railroad, other financiers funded the Roanoke & Southern Railway. The city of Roanoke bought bonds. The investment was expected to benefit the city because the link to North Carolina's Piedmont would increase business.
Francis Fries, son of the founder of the F & H Fries Mills on the New River, served as president of the construction company. The railroad was built in one section from Winston-Salem to Martnsville, and in a second section from Martinsville through the challenging grades of the Blue Ridge Mountains to Roanoke. When the construction project was completed, Francis Fries went into banking and founded the Wachovia Loan and Trust Company. He then opened cotton mills at Mayodan and Avalon, North Carolina, along the track of the railroad he had constructed.
The Roanoke & Southern Railway lasted as an independent company for five years, but from the beginning the investors planned to sell it to the Norfolk and Western Railroad. In 1896, the Norfolk and Western purchased it and renamed it the Norfolk, Roanoke & Southern Rail Road. In 1911, the Norfolk and Western Railway absorbed it, ending the independent status of the Norfolk, Roanoke & Southern Rail Road and creating the Winston-Salem division of the Norfolk & Western. When the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Southern Railway merged in 1982, the line became part of the new Norfolk Southern.1
Completion of the Roanoke & Southern Railway in 1891 altered plans to build a competing railroad through the mineralized Blue Ridge in Carroll and Wythe counties. The New River Plateau Railroad had built track from Pulaski up the New River, parallel to the Roanoke & Southern Railway, to carry traffic from the iron and zinc mines in Wythe and Carroll counties. The Norfolk and Western acquired the New River Plateau Railroad in (renaming it the "Cripple Creek Extension"), then the Roanoke & Southern Railway in 1896. Control of the freight traffic blocked investors from oursuing construction of the Virginia and Kentucky Railroad, which had been chartered in 1884 and was a potential competitor.2
the Norfolk and Western Railway acquired control of both the New River Plateau Railroad (1889) and the Roanoke & Southern Railway (1896)
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
The track still includes five grades that limit the speed of Norfolk Southern trains. Trains with five locomotives, hauling coal to the Belews Creek Power Plant or cars to Winston-Salem, averaged 25 miles per hour in 2011.
The line was known locally as the "Pumpkin Vine." Local lore says it was originally called the Pamlin Line, after a railroad official. A woman waiting at the Rocky Mount station, after looking at a map showing how the track snaked through the mountains, suggested that the curves resembled the stem of a growing pumpkin and the railroad should be called the Pumpkin Vine.3
The "Pumpkin Vine" label is not applied to just a Virginia railroad. Iowa, for example, also had a railroad with enough curves to get the name Pumpkin Vine Railroad as well.4
in 1900, the "Pumpkin Vine" was controlled by the Norfolk and Western Railroad
Source: Library of Congress, Railroad map of North Carolina, 1900 (by H. C. Brown, 1900)