Tidewater in 1907 -- Passengers

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TIDEWATER NOT READY TO CARRY PASSENGERS
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    Norfolk,  March 1 -- "The impression some people hereabout have that the Tidewater railroad folks may be expected to transport passengers over their line between this city and Sewell's Point during the Jamestown Exposition period in case the facilities of the other transportation companies shall prove to be inadequate, is entirely erroneous."
    This was said today by a Norfolk man who is familiar with the transportation question in all its phases.
    "To show you  how ridiculous it is that anybody should entertain the belief that the Tidewater people are going to carry passengers over their line for months to come," he said, "I have only to remind you that they haven't a passenger car or a passenger locomotive on their line in this vicinity, nor have they terminals here into which such could run if they had them.
    "Aside from this they have no operating organization, no operating officials, no passenger department, no superintendent, no train dispatchers, no conductors or engineers and they could not supply this lack in time were they ever so anxious to do so.
    "All they have," he said, "is a track and it is understood by every transportation man here that they have offered to allow this track to be used by any and all railroads here which have passenger transportation facilities upon terms which have been satisfactory to some of the roads, at least, since the Norfolk and Western, the rival of the Tidewater, has contracted to run their trains to the exposition grounds over the Tidewater tracks."
    The speaker said the Tidewater people are too much engaged with the problem of constructing their big road to take time to operate a section of it and if they did in their present shape attempt it and hire such rolling stock as might be picked up, which would necessarily be of the undesirable sort, the result would be unsatisfactory and it would follow that many people would be injured and some killed.  He said that he was satisfied that the men who are building the road are not going to attempt something which they could not do properly.

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
March 2, 1907

[During the April 26 thru December 1 run of the 1907 Jamestown Exposition the N&W ran numerous excursion trains from various points on its system directly to the main entrance of the Exposition using the Tidewater track.  The attached map shows how the excursion trains would have branched off the N&W at South Norfolk bypassing the downtown Norfolk station.  This map is from a 16-page N&W promotion booklet on the Exposition in the N&WHS Archives.]

Gordon Hamilton
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