The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society is a non-profit corporation dedicated to interpreting the American Railway experience using C&O Railway’s history through drawings, documents, and artifacts which the Society collects, preserves, and makes available to as broad an audience as possible.
The Society was organized in January 1969 with the first publication of a monthly newsletter, and in 1975 was incorporated as a non-profit eleemosynary organization within the meaning or subparagraph 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Clifton Forge, though a small town, was an important place on the C&O. It was where locomotives were serviced and readied for the trip West over the Alleghany Mountains and East over the Blue Ridge Mountains and down the James River. There was a large shop facility for the overhaul and repair of locomotives. There was a large rail yard for classifying coal and other freight, a yard for less than car load freight, an icing facility, the main laundry facility for the railroad, a passenger coach yard, and the division headquarters for the region.
