Virginia Central Railroad

The Virginia Central Railroad was an early American railroad chartered in 1836 as the Louisa Railroad and renamed in 1850, running 206 miles from Richmond westward to Covington across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Its Blue Ridge Tunnel, completed in 1858, was at the time the longest tunnel in the United States and the first American tunnel finished without vertical shafts, and the line served as one of the most important railroads for the Confederacy during the Civil War by linking the Shenandoah Valley to Richmond. In 1868 it merged with the Covington and Ohio Railroad to form the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, later reorganized as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and parts of its original route remain in use today by CSX Transportation, Amtrak and the Buckingham Branch Railroad.