Virginian in 1910--Huntington

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
January 29, 1910

VIRGINIAN RAILWAY TO ENTER HUNTINGTON
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Will Have Depot on Seventeenth Street, Where Company Has Already Condemned Property

    Huntington, as has been predicted by the Daily Telegraph since April 1907, is to have the Virginian Railway.  The road will cross the Ohio and enter the city in the residential section, its station being located on Seventeenth street, where the company has already condemned property so that they may have terminal rights.  How soon the work will be started is not known, but from the way in which the people whose property has been taken talk it will not be long.
    The line, which will be the main line, will extend from Elmore, two and one-half miles from Mullens, down the Guyandotte River for fifty miles, where it will connect with another road which has charter rights to build a line up the Guyandotte on the opposite side of the river from the Chesapeake and Ohio.  It is for this company that the Huntington land has been purchased.  The original plan, as told to a Daily Telegraph representative in 1907 by the president of the road, was to build the Virginian down the Guyandotte River from Elmore, a point which would have side tracks capable of holding 4,000 cars and which would be the lowest grade assembling point in the state.  Here twelve branch lines will send coal which can be shipped east to Princeton and Sewell's Point and west to Huntington and the Ohio or some other point which will give the company connection with the Great Lakes to which point they have right of way bought and paid for.  One of the objective points is the Island Creek and United States Coal and Oil properties.
    It is also reported on good authority that the Virginian has purchased the Paint Creek and Piney River Railroads, as it has been frequently reported by the Telegraph it would do.  It is understood that the road, which runs from Beckley Junction to Prosperity, will be extended into Beckley and from Prosperity will run to the McKell [spelling?] property, down the Sand branch to connect with the Virginian at some point near the Crab Orchard Land and Improvement Company property.  The Crab Orchard Land and Improvement Company claims to ship a large portion of the coal which goes over the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Virginian is going after that tonnage as well as that of other companies in the section.
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[Either the reporter or I need a geography lesson.  If the Virginian were to cross the Ohio River on the way to seventeenth street, it would be in Ohio instead of Huntington, WV.]

Gordon Hamilton
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