Virginia & Tennessee Railroad

The Virginia and Tennessee Railroad was an historic 5 ft (1,524 mm) gaugerailroad in the Southern United States, much of which is incorporated into the modern Norfolk Southern Railway. It played a strategic role in supplying the Confederacy during the American Civil War.

Built in the 1850s, the V&T ran completely through southwestern Virginia along the length of the Great Valley of Virginia. The railroad extended westward from Lynchburg, through a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains near the town of Big Lick (the present-day city of Roanoke); there, it turned southwestward and followed the Great Valley to Bristol, a total distance of 204 miles (328 km).

After the Virginia government refused to fund its construction (in part because it could adversely affect the James River Canal), the city of Lynchburg incorporated the railroad on March 24, 1848, as the Lynchburg and Tennessee Railroad. John R. McDaniel, who had previously put together the Lynchburg Gas Light Company and who had pledged his fortune to get it built, was its first president. Construction of the road bed began in 1850, and on February 18, 1852, the railroad's first locomotive (the "Virginia") was tested when it steamed out of Lynchburg's James River basin, climbing the nearby low mountains. Regular freight service was initiated not long afterwards. Construction of the railroad's entire length to Bristol was completed on October 1, 1856.

During the Civil War, Robert L. Owen Sr., who had been one of the engineers surveying for the railroad and who had risen through the ranks, succeeded McDaniel as President. The railroad served as a key supply, food and troop movement route for the Confederate States Army, particularly from the capital of Richmond to the interior at Chattanooga, Tennessee. The V&T moved also key raw materials: copper from mines near Cleveland, Tennessee, lead from mines near Bristol, salt from Saltville, Virginia and saltpeter from caves throughout the region. Union forces finally captured much of the railroad and destroyed tracks and rolling stock in late 1864, although service was periodically interrupted by a series of cavalry raids earlier in the war.

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