N&W Railway Shops — Where Roanoke Built the Engines

In 1882, the Norfolk and Western Railway chose a Virginia village called Big Lick as the junction point for its new main line — a decision that transformed the settlement into the railroad city of Roanoke almost overnight. Within two years, the company had relocated its headquarters and built the Roanoke Shops, a manufacturing complex where the railroad would design, build, and maintain its own steam locomotives. This was a practice uncommon in American railroads and rare outside Britain, and it gave Roanoke an industrial identity it would hold for more than a century. The Shops employed thousands of craftsmen who refined locomotive designs over decades. The N&W's steam power — the Class A 2-6-6-4 articulated, the Class J 4-8-4, and the massive Y6 2-8-8-2 Mallet compounds — brought the railroad industry-wide fame. The Class J 611 and Class A 1218 were both built here. In 1916, the company added a terminal complex at Shaffers Crossing west of downtown: one full-circle roundhouse and two half-circle roundhouses, plus car shops and yard. The Roanoke Shops were so large and self-sufficient that the N&W needed only one other heavy repair site, in Portsmouth, Ohio, to serve the western half of its system. The N&W became the last major American railroad to abandon steam for diesel-electric power, holding out until 1960. Coal was both the cargo the railroad hauled and the fuel that powered its locomotives — a self-sustaining loop that made economic sense longer here than anywhere else. The Roanoke Shops continued building and repairing rolling stock until Norfolk Southern closed them in 2020, ending 139 years of operations. The Class J 611 has been restored to working order and is maintained by the North Carolina Transportation Museum. The Class A 1218 sits on static display at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke. Most of the original shop buildings survive in East End as industrial conversions. The district is actively redeveloping. You can do a self-guided drive-by or check if the Virginia Museum of Transportation is running Rail Heritage tours — the interpretive context is worth it if you want to understand what built this city.