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The Belt Line / Southeastern and Atlantic RR / Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line
(For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.)
The Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line is a railroad line “belting” the area, that is used, funded and, to a degree, run by all the railroads that enter and exit Norfolk. Touting the commercial development of “the new Norfolk,” Hill’s city directory of 1930 contained this description (“Commercial Development,” pp. 23, 24) of the Belt Line and its  history up to that time:
“[I]t would be well to outline the development of the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad, which has been declared by experts to be one of the greatest assets possessed by any port of an industrial city.
...For a number of years the barges of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad [NYP&N] landed for loading an unloading at the different car float bridges of the Norfolk railroads, and were unloaded and loaded by engines and crews of the Norfolk railroads. This method caused delays in the movement of the floating equipment of N.Y.P. and N. Railroad.
In 1896, Mr. Cassatt [owner of N.Y.P. and N.] conceived the idea of building a terminal where all freight cars for his road could be assembled and where the barges could be loaded and unloaded by the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk road’s engines and crews.
Surveys for this terminal, as well as the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad (then known as the Southeastern and Atlantic Railroad), were started in June, 1896, and both were completed in 1898.
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