Virginian Coal Cars

[NW Mailing List]

I will add what I know for sure and what I believe, while we wait for the
guys who really know this stuff to chirp in.

The Virginian and the N&W merged in 1959; this was the culmination of
several prior attempts by the N&W to take over the Virginian.
It was considered at that time one of the first of the modern mergers of
parallel-competing lines.
Because of supply contracts, traffic, and car shortages I suspect, but do
not know, that some Virginian coal cars did get routed to Norfolk over the
N&W for unloading.  And vice versa.  Prior to the merger.
After the merger there were bocoo VGN cars on the N&W, and vice versa.  For
some things the Virginian lettering got painted out right away.  For some
things the Virginian stuff got sold off or scrapped quite rapidly.(too
rapidly according to some of the Virginian brethren; another topic better
over beverages).
There was no rush about repainting the hoppers.  I had thought there might
be equipment trusts involved, but a more knowledgeable railroader told me
that that was not at issue; they just didn't repaint the cars until they
needed to.
Some of the hoppers hung around for years in the Virginian lettering.  I
believe I saw a hopper lettered for Virginian in Columbus in 1984--24 years
after the merger.

Frank Bongiovanni






On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 9:50 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> Jack;  good question.  The answer is YES!!
>
> But I'm going to defer to some of the guys who worked for the railroad
> during or near the period in question(Hi Harry, Gordon, Abram and bunch of
> you who were a lot closer to the area than I was then)to provide a more
> complete and more knowledgeable explanation.
>
> Frank Bongiovanni
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Aug 5, 2020, at 11:32 AM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <
> nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> It seems to me that as a boy, I saw a lot of Virginian coal cars, along
> with N&W coal cars, being pulled into Norfolk during the late 50s and early
> 60s.  Do I remember this correctly?  Did N&W also pull a lot of Virginian
> coal cars?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jack Fletcher​
>
>
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