Norfolk Southern Corporation - Stock Certificate

Specimen Stock, American Bank Note Company.

The Norfolk Southern Railway (reporting mark NS) is a Class I freight railroad in the United States. With headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31,250 km) in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and previously on CN from Buffalo to St. Thomas. NS is responsible for maintaining 28,400 miles (45,700 km), with the remainder being operated under trackage rights from other parties responsible for maintenance. The most common commodity hauled on the railway is coal from mines in Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The railway also offers the largest intermodal network in eastern North America. Norfolk Southern was formed in 1982, following the Norfolk and Western railroad being merged into the Southern railroad.

NS is a major transporter of domestic and export coal. The railway's major sources of the mineral are located in Pennsylvania's Cambria and Indiana counties, as well as the Monongahela Valley; West Virginia; and the Appalachia regions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In Pennsylvania, NS also receives coal through interchange with R.J. Corman Railroad/Pennsylvania Lines at Cresson, Pennsylvania, originating in the "Clearfield Cluster". NS's export of West Virginia bituminous coal begins transport on portions of the well-engineered former Virginian Railway and the former N&W double-tracked line in Eastern Virginia to its Lambert's Point coal pier on Hampton Roads at Norfolk. Coal transported by NS is thus exported to steel mills and power plants around the world. The company is also a major transporter of auto parts and completed vehicles. It operates intermodal container and TOFC (trailer on flat car) trains, some in conjunction with other railways. NS was the first railway to employ roadrailers (highway truck trailers with interchangeable wheel sets).

Norfolk Southern is the namesake and leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation, based in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk Southern Corporation was incorporated in Virginia on July 23, 1980 and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol NSC. The primary business function of Norfolk Southern Corporation is the rail transportation of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished goods across the Southeast, East, and Midwest United States. The corporation further facilitates transport to the remainder of the United States through interchange with other rail carriers while also serving overseas transport needs by serving several Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports. As of April 10, 2019, Norfolk Southern Corporation's total public stock value was slightly over $51.6 billion.

On December 12, 2018, Norfolk Southern announced that it would be relocating its headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia; leaving its hometown of Norfolk after 38 years. The move is expected to be completed by the year 2021.

Norfolk Southern and its chief competitor, CSX Transportation, have a duopoly on the transcontinental freight rail lines in the Northeastern and Southern United States (South Atlantic and East South Central states).

The system began in 1982 with the creation of the Norfolk Southern Corporation, a holding company for the Southern Railway (SOU, formed in 1894) and Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W, formed in 1881). The new company was given the name of the Norfolk Southern Railway, an older line acquired by SOU in 1974, that primarily served North Carolina and the southeastern tip of Virginia. Headquarters for the new NS were established in Norfolk, Virginia. The company suffered a slight embarrassment when the marble headpiece at the building's entrance was unveiled, which read "Norfork Southern Railway". A new headpiece replaced the erroneous one several weeks later. NS aimed to compete in the eastern United States with CSX Transportation, formed after the Interstate Commerce Commission's 1980 approval of the merger of the Chessie System and the Seaboard System.

Norfolk Southern's predecessor railroads date to the early 19th century.

The SOU's earliest predecessor line was the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road. Chartered in 1827, the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road Company became the first to offer regularly scheduled passenger train service with the inaugural run of the Best Friend of Charleston in 1830. Another early predecessor, the Richmond & Danville Railroad (R&D), was formed in 1847 and expanded into a large system after the American Civil War under Algernon S. Buford. The R&D ultimately fell on hard times and in 1894, it became a major portion of the new Southern Railway (SOU). Financier J. P. Morgan selected veteran railroader Samuel Spencer as president. Profitable and innovative, Southern became, in 1953, the first major U.S. railroad to completely switch to diesel-electric locomotives from steam.

The City Point Railroad, established in 1838, was a 9-mile (14 km) railroad in Virginia that started south of Richmond — specifically, City Point on the navigable portion of the James River, now part of the independent city of Hopewell — and ran to Petersburg. It was acquired by the South Side Railroad in 1854. After the Civil War, it became part of the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O), a trunk line across Virginia's southern tier formed by mergers in 1870 by William Mahone, who had built the Norfolk & Petersburg Railroad in the 1850s. The AM&O was the oldest portion of the Norfolk & Western (N&W) when it was formed in 1881, under new owners with a keen interest and financial investments in the coal fields of Western Virginia and West Virginia, a product which came to define and enrich the railroad. In the second half of the 20th century, the N&W acquired the Virginian Railway (1959), the Wabash Railway, and the Nickel Plate Road, among others.

In 1982, the two systems merged and formed the Norfolk Southern Railway.

The system grew with the acquisition of over half of Conrail. In 1996, CSX bid to buy Conrail; Norfolk Southern, fearing that CSX would come to dominate rail traffic in the eastern U.S., responded with a bid of its own. On June 23, 1997, NS and CSX filed a joint application with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) for authority to purchase, divide, and operate the assets of Conrail. On June 6, 1998, the STB approved the NS-CSX application, effective August 22, 1998. NS acquired 58% of Conrail assets, including about 7,200 miles (11,600 km) of track, most of which was part of the former Pennsylvania Railroad. CSX got the remaining 42%. NS began operating its trains on its portion of the former Conrail network on June 1, 1999, closing out the 1990s merger era. The Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) was a 11,000-mile (18,000 km) system formed in 1976 from the Penn Central Railroad (1968–1976), and five other ailing northeastern railroads that were conveyed into it, to form a government-financed corporation. Conrail was perhaps the most controversial conglomerate in corporate history. Penn Central itself was created by merging three venerable rivals — the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR, 1846), the New York Central Railroad (NYC, 1831), and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (NYNH&H, 1872) — as well as some smaller competitors. In 1980, Conrail had become profitable after the Staggers Act largely deregulated the U.S. railroad industry. Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation have a duopoly over all east–west freight rail traffic east of the Mississippi River.

In 2016, a proposed merger that had been months in the pipeline with Canadian Pacific was abandoned abruptly. The proposed merger would have seen the joining of two companies worth over $20 billion each.

According to NS's 2018 Annual Report to Investors, at the end of 2018, NS had more than 26,000 employees, 4,100 locomotives, and 54,400 freight cars. At the end of 2018, the transport of coal made up 16% of the total operating revenue of NS, general merchandise (automotive, chemicals, metals, construction materials, agriculture commodities, consumer products, paper, clay, and forest products) made up 59%, and intermodal made up 25% of the total. Norfolk Southern has since slimmed its fleet to roughly 3,950 locomotives.

Read More

Read Less