Founding of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad began on 8 March 1832, when the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad was chartered to connect Weldon, North Carolina, with Portsmouth, Virginia. It was reorganized in 1846 as the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad and later renamed the Seaboard Air Line System. During the 1890s, the company developed passenger service between Atlanta and the Northeast, with headquarters in Portsmouth, Virginia. It also developed a rail line from New York to Florida, building Main Street Station in downtown Richmond and several new segments of line to create a continuous north-south route through central Virginia. This let the company stop using competitors' lines in the Richmond to Petersburg corridor. Its tracks ran along the east side of Richmond near Shockhoe Bottom, and to avoid conflicts with vehicles and pedestrians, the lines were elevated through much of Richmond, especially south of Main Street Station. A spur of the Atlantic Coast Line, just north of the Appomattox River, ran west of the main Seaboard line to reach the growing suburb of Ettrick.

Ettrick, Virginia · United States