1907 - Reported Sale of the Virginian Road is Disbelieved

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Roanoke Times - July 13, 1907

Reported Sale of the Virginian Road is Disbelieved

Portsmouth, Va., July 12. -- Raymond Dupuy, vice-president and 
general manager of H.H. Rogers' Virginian Railway Company, left 
Norfolk yesterday, and therefore nothing official could be had at the 
general offices of the road, either confirming or denying the rumor 
that the road has been sold to a Philadelphia syndicate.
   That rumor is prevalent in Philadelphia and newspapers there have 
been asking their correspondents here whether the story is well based.
   Employees of the railway in question, who talked of the report, 
said that they had seen nothing which appeared to indicate that there 
has been any change of ownership, and they all said that they did not 
believe there was anything in the story.
   There have been many similar rumors, each of which has turned out 
to be false, that whenever a fresh one is carried to the Virginian 
people they begin to laugh as soon as the budget is opened. This last 
rumor, however, is a very circumstantial one and certain phases of 
the story appear to give it more color than any similar emanation in the past.
   The fact that the news first came from Richmond, however, did not 
strengthen the story, it being asked how it should come about that 
Richmond, through which the line does not even pass, should know more 
about the road than does Norfolk, where the general offices are.
   When Henry H. Rogers was at Norfolk on April 27 last he said that 
he would take a more active interest in the management of the 
Virginian road than he had done in the past and expected to come here 
frequently to see how things are getting along. He at that time gave 
evidence that the construction and operation of the road was a work 
in which his whole heart was enlisted.
   It was said by skeptics a couple of years ago that the road would 
never be completed, and that should it be would be sold to the 
Pennsylvania railroad interest should that interest offer 
$100,000,000 for the property, which it was then estimated would cost 
to complete about $50,000,000. Financiers laughed at this story then 
and some very sound ones laughed today when they talked of the latest 
rumor, and they declared that it was but another crop of the same 
sort which has been marketed every week or so for several years while 
the construction of the great line proceeded.

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As we all know today, this was all false rumor.
53 years would pass before The Virginian Railway would be sold to 
another great Virginian railway.

- Ron Davis, Roger Link