Virginia Room Digital Collection

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The Virginia Room Digital Collection includes photographs, oral histories, books, pamphlets and finding aids to items in the Virginia Room. Continue to check back for new additions.

Browse Items (7 total)

HNWR198.jpg
Diesel Engine No. 322 pulls a consist of coal through Virginia. The switch to diesel was difficult for N&W given its commercial investment in coal.

HNWR111.jpg
Diesel Engine No. 1590 passes through Buena Vista, Virginia. Notice the train order raised to be grabbed by the engineer as the train passes.

HNWR087.jpg
The diesel engine was developed in 1890 by Rudolph Diesel. The Central Railroad of New Jersey was the first to use a diesel locomotive in 1925. It was not until 1955 that N&W began to order diesel locomotives, primarily from American Locomotive…

HNWR086.jpg
Diesel engines could operate more efficiently than the steam engine and American railroads were quick to make the switch. Between 1941 and 1955, the number of diesel locomotives in use went from 1,200 to 20,000. Pictured is Engine No. 8511.

HNWR085.jpg
Diesel Engine No. 1633, photographed shortly after being built. Notice the railroad's last corporate logo, the more streamlined "NW". The white-on-black design was introduced by John Fishwick when he was the railroad's president in 1971.

HNWR083.jpg
The Pocahontas moves east through Blue Ridge, Virginia pulled by Diesel No. 1014. The engine, though bearing the N&W name, was a diesel originally belonging to the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac. By the late 1950s, as the N&W was…

HNWR073.jpg
To join the celebration of the nation's bicentennial, N&W painted this diesel locomotive red, white, and blue. The engine's number was appropriately 1776.
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