Norfolk & Western Blotters

These are more blotters from the Dale Hastin collection. As usual, click the images to download PDFs of the blotters. Each of the PDFs are about 0.4 megabytes in size.

Norfolk & Western celebrated its centennial in 1938 with this blotter, which apparent shows a debate in the Virginia statehouse. The rail route from City Point to Petersburg mentioned on the blotter was actually the City Point Railroad, which was N&W’s earliest predecessor. The N&W itself wasn’t formed until 1881.

Norfolk & Western’s premiere passenger route was between Norfolk and Cincinnati, and the Pocahontas was the railway’s main overnight train on that route. The train began operating in November, 1926, so this blotter may be from that year or shortly after. At the time the blotter was printed, the journey took about 20 hours; by the streamlined era, that time was reduced to about 18 hours.

Published in the streamlined era, this blotter advertises both the Pocahontas and the Powhatan Arrow, the railway’s day-time train on the Norfolk-Cincinnati route. Named in a contest after a Virginia Indian chief, the train began operating in 1946 and was completely streamlined in 1949.


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