Map of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and its connections
Source: Library of Congress
For example, a farmer in Louisa County who wanted to ship by rail to Fredericksburg before the Civil War would have to load his items on the Central Virginia Railroad. When that train got to the Central Virginia station in Shockoe Bottom in Richmond (where Main Street Station is located today), the boxcar with the items from Louisa would have to be unloaded.
The items headed to Fredericksburg would be loaded on a "dray wagon" and carried by horse or mule up the steep Broad Street hill, to the separate station of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad where Virginia Commonwealth University is now located on Broad Street. There, everything would be loaded into another boxcar and carried on the RF&P to Fredericksburg. It was great for the equivalent of the local truckers, and the inefficiencies of the system provided jobs in the cities that were funded by higher shipping costs paid by the farmers. The tracks of the Central Virginia and RF&P railroads actually crossed, as they do today at Doswell - but it was rare for boxcars to be shunted from one line to another and avoid the delays and costs of loading and unloading from wagons in Richmond.
During the Civil War, the Confederate Army was handicapped by a lack of supplies when there often were plenty of supplies in the depots, but the quartermaster corps of the southern army was unable to deliver the goods efficiently. In once case, however, the war finally forced the states-rights Confederate government to over-rule objections by North Carolina. That state had blocked construction of a rail connection from Greensboro to Danville, fearing that after the war trade from North Carolina's Piedmont would continue to flow to Richmond via the Richmond and Danville Railroad.
North Carolina wanted to force its farmers to export through the state's primary port at Wilmington. The state's fears were legitimate. The Piedmont Railroad was finally opened to Danville in 1864 - and long after the Civil War, Virginia businesses in Richmond were benefitting from the railroad shipments that continued to flow through that city from the hills of North Carolina.
Why did Virginia develop such a dysfunctional transportation system, and not integrate the railroads until after the Civil War? The primary reason is the sectional rivalry between the different investors in the transportation companies. When Alexandria bought bonds to finance construction of the O&A railroad, the businessmen were not seeking the greatest good for the greatest number. They were naturally oriented towards their personal economic advancement.
The very first railroad in North America connected the falls on the Savannah River with Charleston, South Carolina. That enabled Charleston to intercept some of the downriver trade that otherwise would have gone to Savannah, Georgia. An even more-extreme example of trade rivalry occurred between Petersburg and Portsmouth. The Petersburg residents "stated their aim very clearly as being the desire to tap the trade of Roanoke County, N.C. and to divert trade from the Dismal Swamp Canal."1
The Petersburg Railroad reached the Roanoke River at Weldon, NC in 1833. Portsmouth retaliated by building the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad to the same spot in 1836. The two railroads sued each over over use of the Weldon Bridge across the Roanoke River, and at one point a surprise assault by one line destroyed a section of track owned by the other in order to block the rival's use of the Weldon Bridge. The story would have been more entertaining to the Virginians of that time, had not the state purchased bonds in both competing lines and ended up losing a substantial amount of its investment.
Alexandria captured the Virginia Piedmont trade east of the Blue Ridge by building a turnpike to Warrenton, and then the O&A Railroad to Orange. (Ultimately, that railroad connected Alexandria to Lynchburg and finally to Tennessee.) The northern Virginia investment in transportation infrastructure was successful - profits from trade with the upper watershed of the Rappahannock ended up going to Alexandria merchants, not to Fredericksburg.
Alexandria also competed intensely with Baltimore for the agricultural trade out of the Shenandoah Valley. Alexandria financed the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Alexandria, Loudoun, and Hampshire (AL&H) railroads to attract business from farmers west of the Blue Ridge. Those farmers could walk their cattle or use wagons to carry their wheat to Baltimore and even Philadelphia... so Alexandria helped finance both railroads and the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal.
Alexandria also blocked approval of the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad from building through the Shenandoah Valley. That line was forced to take a northern route, dipping into Virginia only briefly at Harpers Ferry. A small extension line to Winchester was approved, but the obvious route of a railroad through the Shenandoah Valley was not used until the 1880's.
At that time, northern capitalists rather than Virginia investors controlled the railroads. Such investors wanted to maximize profits from their railroad, rather than just steer traffic to a particular town. The Northern capitalists expanded and connected railroads in order to increase the total traffic, and of course they had fewer objections towards enhancing the profits in the ports of Baltimore and Philadelphia. One other side effect of building a line through the Shenandoah Valley - the community of "Big Lick" became a railroad center when the Shenandoah Valley Railroad chose it at the location for its junction with the Norfolk and Western Railroad.
