the first railroad in Virginia operated in the Falling Creek watershed between 1811-1819
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
the first railroad in Virginia operated in the Falling Creek watershed between 1811-1819
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
Virginia's first railroad was constructed on Falling Creek in Chesterfield County in 1810 or 1811. That was only 5-6 years after the first American railroad was built at Beacon Hill in Massachusetts.
The Falling Creek Railroad was used to carry gunpowder from where it was produced at the Brown, Page and Burr gunpowder mill to the magazine where it was stored, one mile away. Separating production and storage reduced the risk that both would be destroyed in an explosion, which was a commmon risk in powder manufacturing.
The Falling Creek Railroad was the first railroad in North America to carry hazardous cargo. It was also the first to carry passengers, though it does not appear any were paying customers. All passengers were mill hands and joyriders
A trestle 75' high crossed a stream valley, but the grade was still 8% - far steeper than the typical 2% maximum that modern railroads can handle today.
There was no locomotive. The one car, which resembled the bed of a wagon, had wooden wheels. It moved by gravity downhill to the magazine, unrolling behind it a long rope attached to a drum. Pulling the car back to the powder mill required pulling on the rope. Human arms could not accomplish that task, so the rope was attached to a drum and the mill's waterwheel was used to turn the drum. As the rope wrapped around the drum, it pulled the car back uphill.
The two rails were designed to be different:1
The gunpowder mill supplied American forces during the War of 1812. An explosion destroyed the mill in 1819, but local boys used the wooden railroad for amusement rides until at least 1823. Operations probably ended when the trestle decayed.
No physical evidence of the first railroad in Virginia has been found.2
The Falling Creek Railroad was used by just one company, the gunpowder mill. The railroad was not a "common carrier" hauling freight for other businesses or passengers. It was completed before the first charter was issued for a railroad franchise in the United States, in 1815. In modern corporate terms, it might be described as a "prechartered private carrier."3
The Virginia General Assembly issued its first formal railroad charter to the Winchester and Potomac Railroad in 1827. Ten years later the legislature established standard provisions for such charters, such as the right to construct branch and lateral track for up to 10 miles from the mainline.sup>4
The legislature awarded a charter to the similar Chesterfield Railroad in 1828. That 13.5 mile railroad carried coal from Midlothian through the valley of Falling Creek to ships on the James River. Its wooden rails were topped with a strap of iron.
Like the Falling Creek Railroad, there was no locomotive. The Chesterfield Railroad relied upon gravity to carry loaded cars to the James River. Horses plus an inclined plane were used to pull empty cars back uphill to the mine.5
1. Frederick C. Gamst, Marilou Gamst, "Virginia's First Railroad, on Falling Creek, about 1810," Railroad History, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, No. 168 (Spring 1993), pp.5-8, p.14, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43521633; "Historic Sites Venue Map," Chesterfield County, https://www.chesterfield.gov/DocumentCenter/View/3182/Historic-Sites-Venue-Map-PDF (last checked November 15, 2020)
2. Frederick C. Gamst, Marilou Gamst, "Virginia's First Railroad, on Falling Creek, about 1810," Railroad History, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, No. 168 (Spring 1993), p.9, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43521633 (last checked November 15, 2020)
4. Emmett Garnett Shufflebarger, "The Beginnings of the Norfolk and Western Railway System, 1830-1870," Master of Arts Thesis, College of William and Mary, 1958, p.7, https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-ta6x-1p97 (last checked October 10, 2021)
5. Frederick C. Gamst, Marilou Gamst, "Virginia's First Railroad, on Falling Creek, about 1810," Railroad History, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, No. 168 (Spring 1993), p.13, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43521633 (last checked November 15, 2020)