Buckingham
Branch Railroad - (en)
Buckingham Branch Railroad (AAR reporting marks BB) is a Class III
short-line railroad operating over 200 miles (322 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.
History
The tracks in the heart of Central Virginia which are now operated by the
Buckingham Branch Railroad in the 21st century were mostly laid out in the
19th century by several railroad companies. These include the Louisa
Railroad, the Virginia Central Railroad, the state-owned Blue Ridge
Railroad (with famous tunnels designed by state engineer Claudius Crozet
and financed by the Virginia Board of Public Works), and the Covington and
Ohio Railroad. All of those lines became part of Collis Huntington's
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) in the 1870s, which connected the
Chesapeake Bay with the valleys of the New River and Kanawha River,
leading to the Ohio River Valley and thence the Mississippi River.
Major James H. Dooley's Richmond and Allegheny Railroad was built along
the James River along the former right-of-way of the James River and
Kanawha Canal in the 1880s. It too became part of the C&O, offering a
lower grade pathway for coal bound from the mountains to Newport News than
the olderl line through Staunton, Crozet's Blue Ridge Tunnel complex, and
Charlottesville. Diverging from the older line at Goshen east of Clifton
Forge, this became known as the James River line, rejoining the old
Virginia Central tracks near Main Street Station at Richmond.
The short-line branch from Bremo Bluff on the James River line into
Buckingham County transported kaolin clay from the unique and rare
deposits of Willis Mountain, along with timber, quarried rock, and minor
amounts of general freight.
As major railroads merged and consolidated in the late 20th century, many
rail lines with low traffic were abandoned, spun-off into short-line
railroads, or at risk of abandonment. With lower operating costs and
personalized service to shippers, many of the short-lines were able to
perpetuate rail service in areas where the Class 1 railroads could not
operate profitably, even when subsidized by government entities.
