Places & Things > Railroads > Richmond and Petersburg Railroad
The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad was founded in 1836 and began operations in 1838. It ran 22 miles between Virginia’s capital and its second largest industrial city. Although small, its strategic location gave it a critical role in the Civil War, particularly in the last year when it supplied Tichmond and the Confederate forces defending it.
Early history
The railroad was built between 1836 and 1838, mostly by slaves contracted from their owners. The Panic of 1837 made it difficult to finance the railroad, but loans from English investors and the Virginia Board of Public Works allowed it to be completed in 1838. At first the railroad terminated on the south bank of the James River but a railroad bridge was built bringing it into the city of Richmond itself.
A short branch line was built to Port Walthall in 1845. In 1848 the Clover Hill Railroad was built to bring coal 18 miles from the mine at Winterpock down to a junction with the Richmond & Petersburg.
Connections
The railroad was originally built to a 5 foot gauge. This was different from the 4 foot 8 1/2 inch guage that would become standard throughout the United States. But this was not considered a problem because the railroad did not connect to any other railroads for the first years of its existence.
There was no connection to any of the other railroads in Richmond even after the bridge was built across the James. This was common in a number of cities, such as Baltimore, Washington and even Chicago, since railroads were originally viewed as a way of transporting goods between a port city and its hinterland, and not between cities. The railroad owned an omnibus and coaches to transfer passengers to the stations of other railroads in Richmond.
There was also no connection at the southern end of the line, where the railroad terminated at Pocahontas on the north bank of the Appomattox. The railroad used a turnpike bridge to transfer freight and passengers to the city of Petersburg on the south bank. The merchants of Petersburg preferred it this way, since freight and passengers would have to be hauled by local businesses and passengers often spent the night in local hotels rather than moving through town.
Early Civil War
In May of 1861 the Petersburg Common Council agreed to allow a railroad link across the Appomattox, but only if it were to be used strictly for military traffic and if it would be removed after the war. It was completed in August of 1861, removing a bottleneck in the Confederate transportation system that could have proved disastrous during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign.
The early war years saw heavy traffic on the R&P, despite its relatively poor condition and limited sidings. Military traffic, including many of the tens of thousands of men who would become the Army of Northern Virginia, flowed from the Carolinas north to Petersburg and into Richmond. Supplies for the men and for the quickly expanding capital of the Confederacy followed as well. Coal from the Clover Hill mines powered the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. The largest iron works in the Confederacy supplied half the artillery for the army and many of the iron plates for the Confederate Navy’s ironclads..
The 1862 Union occupation of Nofolk and McClellan’s Pensinsula campaign threatened the railroad, but never succeeded in interrupting the flow of traffic. The Union naval blockade, though, limited the Port Walthall connection’s usefulness, as traffic could no longer enter Chesapeake Bay to go up the James River.
1864
As Grant’s advancing armies made the railroad connection with Richmond even more critical another threat developed. On May 5, 1864, troops from Major General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James disembarked at Bermuda Hundred, a small fishing port on the James River. His mission was not to Capture Richmond, but to break the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad to cut off all supplies to Richmond and the Confederate army defending it.
General Butler had 33,000 men in the 10th and 18th Corps. He was up against 18,000 Confederates under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard, many of them very young or elderly men scraped together from local defense forces.
Butler initially started out well, driving Confederate troops away from the railroad around Port Walthall Junction on May 7. He concentrated on tearing up the railroad tracks rather than pushing his advantage. Fights at Chester Station and Proctor’s Creek were inconclusive, but on May 16 Confederate troops struck Butler’s right flank and drove it back. After heavy fighting Butler pulled back to his Bermuda Hundred lines, and Beauregard recaptured the railroad. The tracks of the useless Port Walthall branch were pulled up were pulled up and the rails recycled into cannon at the Tredegar Works.
The Confederates constructed the Howlett line, a line of earthworks across the neck of the Bermuda Hundred Peninsula. Butler was perfectly safe behind his fortifications in Bermuda Hundred, but Beauregard was equally safe behind his, allowing him to keep Butler bottled up with a much smaller force. Butler hailed in his mission to destroy the railroad, which was repaired and would operate until the end of the war.
1865
Supplies continued to flow into Richmond until 1865. The supply line to Richmond from the south was not cut until April 2, 1865, when Granr’s armies cut the last railroad coming into Petersburg from the south. As Confederate forces hastily abandoned Richmond they burned the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad bridge to slow down pursuing Federal armies.
After the War
The bridge over the James into Richmond was rebuilt in 1866. A company was formed that built a connection within Richmond between the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad and the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, allowing trains to eventually travel through from Petersburg to Washington.
But at the same time officials in Petersburg tore up the military connection to connecting roads. A bridge was eventually built by another railroad.
In 1886 the railroad’s five foot gauge was changed to the U.S. standard 4 foot 8 1/2 inch guage.
The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad continued to be independently owned until 1898, when it merged with several railroads to become the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Further mergers happened over the next century, and the railroad is now part of CSX Transportation.