Chesapeake and Ohio Railway

19th century

The C&O traces its origins to the Louisa Railroad of Louisa County, Virginia, begun in 1836. By 1850, the Louisa was built east to Richmond and west to Charlottesville, and in keeping with its new and larger vision, was renamed the Virginia Central Railroad. The Commonwealth of Virginia owned a portion of Virginia Central stock and financed the Blue Ridge Railroad to accomplish the task of crossing the first mountain barrier to the west.

During the American Civil War, the Virginia Central played a key role in several battles but was a target for Federal armies. By 1865, it only had five miles of track still in operation and almost no cash to rebuild. Officials realized that they would have to get capital to rebuild from outside the economically devastated South and succeeded in getting Collis Huntington interested. He supplied the Virginians with the money needed to complete the line through what is now West Virginia. The old Covington and Ohio Railroad properties were conveyed to the C&O in keeping with its new mission of linking the Atlantic Ocean with the "Western Waters" of the Ohio River.

Huntington intended to connect the C&O with his Western and Midwestern holdings, but ended up stopping construction at the Ohio River. Thus the only connection to the West was by packet boats operating on the river. Because the mineral resources of West Virginia and Kentucky had not been fully realized yet, the C&O suffered through the bad times brought on by the financial panic Depression of 1873, and went into receivership in 1878. When reorganized it was renamed The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company.

Conditions improved in the 1880s, when coal resources began to be developed and shipped eastward. the Peninsula Extension was completed from Richmond to the new city of Newport News located on Hampton Roads, the East's largest ice-free port. Transportation of coal to Newport News where it was loaded on coastwise shipping and transported to the Northeast became a staple of the C&O's business at this time.

In 1888, the C&O built the Cincinnati Division from Huntington down the South bank of the Ohio River and across the river at Cincinnati, connecting with the "Big Four" and other Midwestern Railroads.

20th century

From 1900 to 1920, most of the C&O's line tapping the rich bituminous coal fields of West Virginia and Kentucky were completed, and the C&O as it was known throughout the rest of the 20th Century was essentially in place.

In 1910, the C&O absorbed the Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville Railroad, which had been built diagonally across the state of Indiana from Cincinnati to Hammond in the preceding decade. This gave the C&O a direct line from Cincinnati to the great railroad hub of Chicago.

The first small terminal and repair shops were located at Richmond beginning in 1860. After expanding to Huntington in 1872, the primary back shops were established on 100 acres of land along Fifth Avenue. These facilities were expanded and modernized over a five-year period in three phases beginning in 1916. Another large shop site was established at Clifton Forge, Virginia in 1890 on 1,200 acres of land, including the classification yard. In 1929 the system's primary freight car repair and erecting facility was built at the west end of the mammoth yard at Russell, Kentucky, called the Raceland Car Shops.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway never spent lavishly on streamlined passenger trains, or passenger service in general, opting to put most of its resources into moving coal and freight. While the George Washington was the railroad's flagship, the Sportsman (which connected Detroit with Washington, D.C., and Newport News) and the Resort Special were also well-traveled trains on the system. Much of the reason for the popularity of C&O's passenger trains was because of Chessie, the sleeping kitten, one of the most successful and fondly remembered marketing campaigns ever developed. Chessie was so popular when she debuted in 1933 that the C&O could not keep enough merchandise in stock.

The C&O mostly focused on passenger trains in the eastern half of its system. Despite connecting to Chicago, the largest rail hub and third largest city in the country, passenger service to it was discontinued in 1933. Trains continued to run as west as Hammond, Indiana, a Chicago suburb, until 1950. It had accessed the city's Central Station (and previously, Dearborn Station) via the former Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville Line.

Chessie sported two kittens, Nip and Tuck. During World War II, Chessie's "husband" — Peake — (creating the name "Chessie Peak", as in Chesapeake) was shown with a bandage on his paw as a war veteran returning from military service.

While the kitten was created by the Austrian artist Guido Grünewald, the success of Chessie as a marketing tool is often credited to Lionel Probert, at the time an assistant to the C&O president.