The Commonwealth Railway, Inc. is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Class III

short-line railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that oper ...

operating of track of a former Norfolk, Franklin and Danville Railway line from Suffolk, Virginia, to

Portsmouth, Virginia Portsmouth is an independent city in southeast Virginia and across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. As of the 2020 census, the population was 97,915. It is part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Naval ...

. The main office is in the Wilroy area of Suffolk. Commonwealth Railway is owned by Genesee & Wyoming Inc. and is a part of Norfolk Southern's "Thoroughbred Shortline Program". It interchanges with Norfolk Southern in Suffolk. An important industry on the line was the

BASF BASF SE () is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The BASF Group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries ...

Chemical plant in the West Norfolk area of Portsmouth. The plant was usually switched by locomotive #444, a GP16 class locomotive rebuilt by

Seaboard Coast Line Railroad The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad was a Class I railroad company operating in the Southeastern United States beginning in 1967. Its passenger operations were taken over by Amtrak in 1971. Eventually, the railroad was merged with its affiliate li ...

in the early 1980s. The main locomotive was #517, a CF7 rebuild of an

EMD F7 The EMD F7 is a model of diesel-electric locomotive produced between February 1949 and December 1953 by the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors (EMD) and General Motors Diesel (GMD). Although originally promoted by EMD as a freight- ...

performed by the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and S ...

in the 1970s. The BASF plant closed in 2007 and was subsequently demolished. A small chemical company remains on the site. Another important industry is ''APM Terminals'', which is a modern shipping container port in Portsmouth along the Elizabeth River. This port was leased by

Maersk (), also known simply as Maersk (), is a Danish shipping company, active in ocean and inland freight transportation and associated services, such as supply chain management and port operation. Maersk was the largest container shipping line ...

to the Virginia Port Authority in late 2010. Commonwealth Railway is the only rail line to access the port. Another port is planned for Craney Island; however, as of 2020 the port is still in the planning stage and has not been constructed. With the opening of this new container port, two

EMD SW1500 The EMD SW1500 is a Diesel-electric locomotive intended for switching service and built by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division from 1966 to 1974. The SW1500 replaced the SW1200 in the EMD product line. Many railroads regularly used SW1500 ...

switch engines were added to the roster. To handle the container traffic to and from the port, the Commonwealth Railway line through the city of Portsmouth has been realigned down the medians of I-664 and SR 164, at a cost of $60 million. A small marshaling yard was built in the Baileytown area of Suffolk. Double-stack container service started in December 2010. A second phase, paid for by $9 million in federal stimulus funding, will further improve port access and is expected to be completed in September 2011. The Commonwealth Railway had two GP20 locomotives numbered 2090 and 2091 which were sold in 2019 to Larry's Truck & Electric (LTEX) in McDonald, Ohio. By 2020 the Commonwealth Railway operated only one locomotive, an EMD GP15-1 numbered 1424, leased from LTEX. The company's remaining EMD SW1500, No. 1551, is leased to the International Paper Company in Franklin, Virginia. Image:CWRY444GP16.JPG, Rail Link Inc. #444, a GP16 rebuild, was used for switching along the Commonwealth Railway in Suffolk, Virginia. It has since been transferred to the

First Coast Railroad The First Coast Railroad is a class III railroad operating in Florida and Georgia, owned by Genesee & Wyoming. The name is derived from its area of operations around the First Coast of Florida. The FCRD was founded in April 2005 to lease 32 mil ...

, another G&W property, in Fernandina Beach, Florida. Image:Suffolk Va.JPG, Locomotive #517 runs past the site of the new yard at Suffolk, Virginia after switching the

plant. Today it sits behind a warehouse in the Wilroy industrial park, out of service and awaiting a scrapper to cut it up. Image:CWRY 1552 WJ Grimes.JPG, Commonwealth Railway #1552 an SW1500 parked at Wilroy in Suffolk, Virginia. It has been transferred to the G&W's Georgia Central Railway in Lyons, Georgia.Georgia Central Railway Image:APM Terminals WJ Grimes.JPG, Maersk's APM Terminals in

, at night.

References

External links

Commonwealth Railway official webpage - Genesee and Wyoming website

Pictures of CWRY Locomotives

{{DEFAULTSORT:Commonwealth Railway Virginia railroads Genesee & Wyoming Spin-offs of the Norfolk Southern Railway 1989 establishments in Virginia