Building The Virginian Railway
Some historians will hold that the Loup Creek enterprise originally was planned to be just another local mining operation, one that would ship primary product, coal, out of the region via the common carrier railroads. Officially, it was only after problems arose that the plan was expanded to build and operate rail connections, or even build all the way to the sea. This is the version Page used in an I.C.C. hearing.
However, other historians believe that a goal of the plan from the outset was to transport from the mineheads to reach a shipping point without using these common carriers, who as owners of vast coal lands and many mines, were also competitors. There was a lot at stake, as the C&O and the N&W through the secret "community of interests" pact were carefully controlling coal shipping rates. A non-affiliated competitor would threaten that cozy relationship.
Read more about this topic: William Nelson Page
Famous quotes containing the words building and/or railway:
“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5:1.
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)