In the year 1856 a small single-track railroad was opened from Richmond to Danville, Virginia. This enterprise, like many others in ante-bellum days, was carried out largely with funds supplied by the State. As long afterwards as 1867, three-fifths of the stock was owned by the State of Virginia, but soon after this time the State disposed of its investment to a railroad company operating a line in North Carolina from Goldsboro westward to Greensboro, and projected southward to Charlotte. In modern times, this little road, like the Richmond and Danville, has become an integral part of the Southern Railway system, but in those days it was controlled, curiously enough, by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. After 1867 the new owners of the Richmond and Danville began aggressively to extend their lines. By leasing the North Carolina Railroad, a small property forming a link with the Greensboro line, they created a through route from Richmond to Charlotte. By 1874 they had built the road southward to Atlanta, Georgia, and had thus formed the first continuous route from Richmond to that city. Because of the extreme disorder and depression in the South during the years after the Civil War the line did not prosper and was sold under foreclosure about 1875. But the company was reorganized in 1878 and acquired the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta, thus extending its lines into the heart of South Carolina and tapping a rich territory. During these early years the Pennsylvania Railroad interests, which still held control, supplied the funds necessary for making improvements. At the same time that the Richmond and Danville was linking up the commercial centers of the southern Atlantic seaboard, another system--known as the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia--was being built up in the Appalachian Mountains to the west. This property and its predecessors had to some extent been state-owned enterprises at first, but in 1870 the Pennsylvania Railroad interests acquired control. A holding company called the Southern Railway Securities Company was now formed for the purpose of controlling all the Pennsylvania Railroad interests south of Washington. Besides the properties mentioned, this Securities Company soon obtained several other Atlantic seaboard properties extending from Richmond to Charleston, and also the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, running from Memphis to Chattanooga. Thus at this early day a considerable railroad system had been welded together in the South, reaching many points of importance and forming direct connection at Washington with the northern properties of the Pennsylvania system. Had this experiment been successful, we would perhaps today reckon the great Southern Railway system as part of the Pennsylvania group. But the outcome was disappointing; the roads did not prosper; and soon the poorer sections began to default. The Pennsylvania then disposed of its interests and left the roads to shift for themselves.