he Norfolk & Western Railway was formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It had headquarters in Roanoke, Va., for most of its 150 year existence. Its primary purpose was the provide for the movement of coal out of the West Virginia coalfields east to the port of Norfolk, Virginia, and west to Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. Major branches off that mainline extended north to Hagerstown, Maryland, and south to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Bristol, Virginia. The company was famous for manufacturing steam locomotives and rolling stock in-house at its various Roanoke shops. Around 1960, N&W was the last major American railroad to convert from steam to diesel motive power. Beginning in 1959, a series of mergers brought the Virginian, Wasbash, Akron Canton & Youngstown, and other mid-western regionals into an expanded N&W system that totalled 7500 miles at its peak. In 1980, the N&W merged its operations with those of the Southern Railway to create the Norfolk Southern Corporation holding company. The N&W and the Southern continued as separate railroads operating under this single holding company. In 1982, the Southern was renamed Norfolk Southern Railway and the holding company transferred the Norfolk & Western Railway to the control of the newly renamed company, thus bringing to an end more than a century of "Precision Transportation" from the east coast through the coalfields to midwest markets.