- Frederick J. Kimball
Infobox Person
name=Frederick J. Kimball
caption=
birth_date=birth date|1844|3|6|mf=y
birth_place=Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
death_date=death date and age|1903|7|27|1844|3|6|mf=y
death_place=Frederick James Kimball (
March 6 1844 –July 27 1903 ) was acivil engineer . He is credited as the president of theNorfolk and Western Railway during its early development years and for the development of Pocahontas coalfields inVirginia andWest Virginia .Kimball was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . At 18, he went to work for the Erie Branch of thePennsylvania Railroad as a rodman, a menial worker. After a short time he went toEngland for two years, where he studied English railroading by working in the system. His return to the United States marked several job changes, each of which was a promotion. In 1878, he became the prime mover behind construction and growth of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad which was building up theShenandoah Valley .At an 1881 foreclosure auction, the
Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), an east-west railroad across Virginia controlled byWilliam Mahone was purchased by E.W. Clark and Co., a private banking firm in Philadelphia which controlled theShenandoah Valley Railroad then under construction.Kimball, who was a partner in the Clark firm, headed the new line, which was renamed
Norfolk & Western Railway , and consolidated it with theShenandoah Valley Railroad . For the junction for the Shenandoah and the Norfolk & Western, Kimball and his board of directors selected a small Virginia village called Big Lick, on theRoanoke River . The small town was later renamedRoanoke, Virginia .Under the Kimball era, the
Norfolk & Western became famous for manufacturingsteam locomotive s in-house at itsRoanoke, Virginia shops. Kimball, whose interest ingeology was responsible for the opening of the Pocahontas coalfields in westernVirginia andWest Virginia , pushed N&W lines through the wilds of West Virginia, north toColumbus, Ohio andCincinnati, Ohio , and south toDurham, North Carolina andWinston-Salem, North Carolina . This gave the railroad the route structure it was to use for more than 60 years.In 1885, several small mining companies representing about 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) of
bituminous coal reserves grouped together to form the coalfields' largest landowner, the Philadelphia-based Flat-Top Coal Land Association. Norfolk and Western Railway bought the Association and reorganized it as the Pocahontas Coal and Coke Co., which it later renamed Pocahontas Land Corp, now a subsidiary ofNorfolk Southern .Transported by the N&W and neighboring
Virginian Railway (VGN), Pocahontas coal fueled half the world's navies during the 20th century and today stokes steel mills and power plants all over the globe.Kimball died in 1903, and was succeeded as president of the Norfolk and Western Railway by
Lucius E. Johnson .
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