Interstate 81 (I-81) is a north–south Interstate Highway in the eastern part of the United States. Its southern terminus is at I-40 in Dandridge, Tennessee; its northern terminus is on Wellesley Island at the Canadian border, where the Thousand Islands Bridge connects it to Highway 401, the main Ontario freeway connecting Detroit via Toronto to Montreal. The major metropolitan areas that I-81 connects to include the Tri-Cities of Tennessee, Roanoke in Virginia, Harrisburg and the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania and Syracuse in New York.
The Great Appalachian Valley, also called The Great Valley or Great Valley Region, is one of the major landform features of eastern North America. It is a gigantic trough—a chain of valley lowlands—and the central feature of the Appalachian Mountain system. The trough stretches about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) from Quebec to Alabama and has been an important north-south route of travel since prehistoric times.
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States. With headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, the company operates 19,420 route miles in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and previously on CN from Buffalo to St. Thomas. NS is responsible for maintaining 28,400 miles (45,700 km), with the remainder being operated under trackage rights from other parties responsible for maintenance. The most common commodity hauled on the railway is coal from mines in Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The railway also offers the largest intermodal network in eastern North America.
The Norfolk and Western Railway, commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precision Transportation"; it had a variety of nicknames, including "King Coal" and "British Railway of America".
Frederick James Kimball was a civil engineer. He was an early president of the Norfolk and Western Railway and helped develop the Pocahontas coalfields in Virginia and West Virginia.
Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O) was formed in 1870 in Virginia from three east–west railroads which traversed across the southern portion of the state. Organized and led by former Confederate general William Mahone (1826-1895), the 428-mile (689 km) line linked Norfolk with Bristol, Virginia by way of Suffolk, Petersburg, Lynchburg, and Salem. The AM&O was promoted as a trade link to the west, and further expansion was envisioned with the goal of increasing Virginia's Ohio Valley and Mississippi Valley commerce. It was heavily backed by investors from England and Scotland.
The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) which operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation.
Buckingham Branch Railroad is a Class III short-line railroad operating over 275 miles (443 km) of historic and strategic trackage in Central Virginia. Sharing overhead traffic with CSX and Amtrak, the company's headquarters are in Dillwyn, Virginia in the former Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) station, itself a historic landmark in the community. The railroad was featured in the January 2012 issue of Trains Magazine. It is referenced in the How It’s Made episode “Railway Bridge Ties”, showing it crossing a curved bridge.
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway.
The Northern Central Railway (NCRY) was a Class I Railroad connecting Baltimore, Maryland with Sunbury, Pennsylvania, along the Susquehanna River. Completed in 1858, the line came under the control of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) in 1861, when the PRR acquired a controlling interest in the Northern Central's stock to compete with the rival Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). For eleven decades the Northern Central operated as a subsidiary of the PRR until much of its Maryland trackage was washed out by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, after which most of its operations ceased as the Penn Central declined to repair sections. It is now a fallen flag railway, having come under the control of the later Penn Central, Conrail, and then broken apart and disestablished. The southern part in Pennsylvania is now the York County Heritage Rail Trail which connects to a similar hike/bike trail in Northern Maryland down to Baltimore, named the Torrey C. Brown Rail Trail. Only the trackage around Baltimore remains in rail service.
The Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Bridge carries Norfolk Southern rail lines across the Susquehanna River between Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some of its concrete piers encase stone masonry piers from an earlier truss bridge on this site, completed in 1891 by the Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh Railroad, which was then acquired by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to connect its Harrisburg and Lurgan lines. The current structure was constructed from 1920 to 1924 by replacing the trusses with concrete arches one track at a time. The bridge has fifty-one concrete arches, three more than the nearby Rockville Bridge.
The Great Indian Warpath (GIW)—also known as the Great Indian War and Trading Path, or the Seneca Trail—was that part of the network of trails in eastern North America developed and used by Native Americans which ran through the Great Appalachian Valley. The system of footpaths extended from what is now upper New York to deep within Alabama. Various Indians traded and made war along the trails, including the Catawba, numerous Algonquian tribes, the Cherokee, and the Iroquois Confederacy. The British traders' name for the route was derived from combining its name among the northeastern Algonquian tribes, Mishimayagat or "Great Trail", with that of the Shawnee and Delaware, Athawominee or "Path where they go armed".
The Hanover Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the U.S. states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. The line runs from Baltimore, Maryland, west to Hagerstown, Maryland, along several former Western Maryland Railway (WM) lines. It meets the Baltimore Terminal Subdivision at its east end, and the Lurgan Subdivision heads both north and west from its west end.
The Lurgan Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia. The line runs from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, south to Hagerstown, Maryland, and west to Cherry Run, West Virginia, along a former Western Maryland Railway line. It meets the Hanover Subdivision at Hagerstown and the Cumberland Subdivision at Cherry Run. The line is named after its former northern end in Lurgan Township, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, where the Western Maryland once connected to the Reading Company along the Alphabet Route.
The Lurgan Branch is a railroad line owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway in the U.S. states of Pennsylvania and Maryland. The line is part of the NS Harrisburg Division and runs from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania southwest to Hagerstown, Maryland along former Reading Company and Pennsylvania Railroad lines. Its northeast end is at a junction with the Harrisburg Line, Pittsburgh Line, Royalton Branch, and Amtrak's Keystone Corridor ; its southwest end is at the beginning of the Hagerstown District. At Lemoyne it intersects the Enola Branch.
U.S. Route 11 (US 11) is a part of the U.S. Highway System that runs from New Orleans, Louisiana to Rouses Point, New York. In Maryland, the federal highway runs 12.83 miles (20.65 km) from the West Virginia state line at the Potomac River in Williamsport north to the Pennsylvania state line near Maugansville. US 11 is the primary north–south surface highway in central Washington County, connecting Hagerstown with Williamsport to the south and Hagerstown Regional Airport to the north. The federal highway was once a major long-distance highway, but that role has been assumed by Interstate 81 (I-81), which parallels US 11 not only in Maryland but for most of its course from Tennessee to Upstate New York. US 11 is maintained by the Maryland State Highway Administration except for the municipally-maintained portions within the corporate limits of Williamsport and Hagerstown.
The Cumberland Valley Railroad was an early railroad in Pennsylvania, United States, originally chartered in 1831 to connect with Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works. Freight and passenger service in the Cumberland Valley in south central Pennsylvania from near Harrisburg to Chambersburg began in 1837, with service later extended to Hagerstown, Maryland, and then extending into the Shenandoah Valley to Winchester, Virginia. It employed up to 1,800 workers.
Hagerstown is a city in Washington County, Maryland, United States and the county seat of Washington County. The population of Hagerstown city proper at the 2010 census was 39,662, and the population of the Hagerstown-Martinsburg Metropolitan Area was 269,140. Hagerstown ranks as Maryland's sixth-largest incorporated city.
Roanoke is a train station in Roanoke, Virginia, the current terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Regional line. Built in 2017, it follows several other Roanoke passenger stations that operated from the 1850s to 1979. The station consists of a single high-level platform with a heated shelter. It is unstaffed, with no baggage service. All tickets must be purchased in advance; there is no Quik-Trak kiosk at the station.
