The Virginian Railway earned its nickname honestly. "The Richest Little Railroad in the World" was not marketing copy invented by a publicist — it was a recognition by the railroad industry and financial press that the VGN generated extraordinary profit per route mile compared to most American railroads. It was small by the standards of the major carriers — 443 miles of main line, no major cities on its route, no significant passenger business to speak of. But it moved coal with a precision and efficiency that larger, older railroads envied, and its balance sheet reflected that. Through five decades of operation, the Virginian was one of the most consistently profitable freight railroads in the country.
The case for merging the Virginian into the Norfolk and Western was built not on the VGN's failure but on the redundancy created by two profitable railroads doing essentially the same job in the same geography. Both railroads hauled bituminous coal from southern West Virginia to Hampton Roads. Their routes ran roughly parallel through much of their length, separated by only a few dozen miles. They competed for contracts from some of the same mine operators. They maintained separate maintenance facilities, separate administrative structures, and separate track — all serving essentially overlapping markets. That duplication was expensive, and by the late 1950s the economic pressure to eliminate it had become compelling.
The physical geography of the two railroads underscored both the case for merger and the practical complexity of executing it. The Virginian and the N&W intersected at only two points along their respective systems: at Glen Lyn, Virginia, where the Virginian's main line crossed the N&W at grade, and at South Norfolk, where both railroads approached their Hampton Roads terminals. Everywhere else, the two lines ran independently, never meeting or sharing trackage. This near-miss geography was a deliberate artifact of the Virginian's original design — Page and Rogers had routed the VGN to parallel but not duplicate the N&W corridor — but it also meant that the merged railroad would have two complete, non-overlapping routes serving the same general territory, a situation that offered genuine network benefits.
Serious merger discussions between the two railroads gained momentum in 1958. Both companies' managements and financial advisors analyzed the operational and financial cases, and the Interstate Commerce Commission — which had regulatory authority over railroad mergers and had previously rejected applications involving the two railroads under different circumstances — was presented with a new application in the changed economic climate of the late 1950s. The ICC approved the merger, and the Virginian Railway was formally absorbed into the Norfolk and Western in late 1959. The West Virginia Encyclopedia records the merger as occurring in November 1959; other sources specify December 1, 1959 as the formal effective date.
The operational consequences of the merger unfolded over the months and years that followed. For the Virginian's identity as a corporation and a brand, the transition was immediate: VGN locomotives were repainted in N&W colors, VGN employees were issued N&W credentials, and the administrative structures of the two railroads were merged into the N&W's existing hierarchy. Princeton, which had served as the Virginian's New River Division headquarters for fifty years, was absorbed into the N&W's Pocahontas Division structure. The New River Division ceased to exist as an independent administrative unit.
The fate of the Virginian's electric locomotives was among the merger's most consequential operational decisions. The VGN had operated electric power over 134 miles of its mainline since 1925, and those machines — some of the most powerful electric locomotives ever built for American railroad service — were central to the Virginian's efficiency on its mountain grades. The N&W had no electrified territory anywhere on its system and no interest in extending or maintaining the Virginian's catenary infrastructure. Rather than simply scrapping the electric fleet, the N&W sold a number of the Virginian's electric locomotives to the New Haven Railroad in Connecticut, one of the few remaining American railroads committed to electric operation. The catenary system was dismantled, and the former Virginian mainline was converted to diesel operation.
The Virginian's coal pier at Sewalls Point, near Norfolk, was incorporated into the N&W's Hampton Roads terminal operations. The merged railroad eventually consolidated its coal-export facilities, and the former VGN pier property at Sewalls Point was ultimately acquired by the United States Navy in 1966 for incorporation into Naval Station Norfolk.
For Princeton, the merger's long-term consequences were more significant than its immediate effects. The merged N&W had less need for two full divisional shop complexes serving overlapping territories, and the rationalization of facilities that followed gradually reduced the work performed at Princeton. Employment at the shops declined through the 1960s as the economics of the merged system pointed toward fewer, larger, more strategically located facilities. The city that had been built around the Virginian Railway's New River Division found its railroad employment base steadily contracting, a process that accelerated with broader changes in the coal industry through the 1970s and beyond.
The Virginian Railway operated for fifty years as a model of efficient, well-engineered coal railroading. Its merger into the N&W was not a verdict on the VGN's performance — it was the logical outcome of a half-century of competition between two railroads that had always been doing essentially the same job in the same territory. Princeton's museum preserves the memory of what the Virginian was, even as the tracks the railroad built continue to carry Norfolk Southern freight across the mountains today.