Powhatan Arrow
A postcard photo of the Powhatan Arrow
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| Overview | |
|---|---|
| First service | 1946 |
| Last service | 1969 |
| Former operator(s) | Norfolk and Western Railway |
| Route | |
| Start | Norfolk, Virginia |
| End | Cincinnati, Ohio |
| Train number(s) | 25/26 |
The Powhatan Arrow was one of the named passenger trains of the Norfolk and Western. Its route ran from Norfolk, Virginia, to Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
Train 25 leaves Norfolk at 7:00 am, and made the 565 mile run to Portsmouth, Ohio, in 12 hours 50 minutes. The remaining 111.6 miles to Cincinnati took nearly 3 hours as the train performed all the local work on that stretch of line.
In the reverse direction, Train 26 left Cincinnati at 8:10 am and Portsmouth at 11:10, arriving in Norfolk at 11:55 pm.
The motive power for the Powhatan Arrow was built by the Roanoke Shops of Norfolk and Western located in Roanoke, Virginia. The train was given its name from a name submission contest offered by Norfolk and Western, the winner of which was Mr. Leonard Allen Scott of Dry Branch, Virginia. His entry (among over 140,000) was sent out in the last sack of mail picked up by the mail train in Parrott the day of the deadline for postmarks. The Arrow made its maiden run on April 28, 1946, and quickly became one of the most popular of Norfolk and Western's passenger trains. It and its J-class powered companions traveled approximately 15,000 miles per month and may have traveled nearly three million miles in its lifetime.
Among the most famous steam power of the N&W were the Class "J" 4-8-4 steam locomotives. They were the pride of the N&W, pulling crack passenger trains such as the Cavalier, the Pocahontas and the Powhatan Arrow, as well as ferrying the Southern Railway's Tennessean and Pelican between Monroe, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee. On a test on the Pennsylvania Railroad, a "J" achieved 110 mph with a ten car, 1050-ton train along one section of flat, straight track in Pennsylvania. This was remarkable performance for a 70-inch drivered reciprocating steam locomotive. But, the only time the "J"s were able to do anything like that on N&W rails was on the Eastern portion of the line, between Petersburg and Norfolk. The average speed of the Arrow between Norfolk and Cincinnati, with much of the route through the mountains, was only about 43 mph. The "J"s were numbered from 600 through 613, and were built in three groups from 1941 to 1950, and the only surviving member of this famous class of locomotives is 611, currently operational.
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Wikipedia