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SEE ALSO: • Encyclopedia of Norfolk, Virginia: History & Geography
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Norfolk and Ocean View Railroad, 1879 (For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.) The Norfolk and Ocean View Railroad began in September 1879 as simply the Ocean View Railroad. It was owned by the Ocean View Railroad and Hotel Company (the owners of OceanView), which was chartered June 2, 1879. Its president was Colonel Walter Herron Taylor (former adjutant-general to Robert E. Lee). The company soon built the Ocean View Hotel; and the railroad  was ready for its first trip in September. The railroad was a 9-mile long, narrow-gauge, single-track steam line to Ocean View; it also included two bridges of an aggregate length of about 700 feet, and two trestles of an aggregate length of about 75 feet. Its terminal was a block southeast of Church Street and Princess Anne Road, on Henry Street. The line ran from there, winding westward for about a half-mile to approximately the intersection of Maltby Avenue and Princess Anne Road. From that point, the line turned northward, following what today would be Maltby Avenue up to the southern branch of the Lafayette River (then Tanner's Creek, where the line crossed bridge #1) and then Chesapeake Boulevard (which included bridge #2 over another branch of the creek. (But at this time, Maltby Avenue went no farther north than to Princess Anne Road; and there was no Chesapeake Boulevard.) Thus, the railway went northeastward almost in a straight line to Old Town Crossing (now Norview, at Five Points); from there it went in a straight line almost due north directly to Ocean View. The entire trip took thirty minutes.
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