Virginia Capitol Connections, 2025 Annual Magazine 28 Passenger Rail Service to Return to the New River Valley By LARRY HINCKER It is now official: Passenger Rail Service is returning to Virginia’s New River Valley. Governor Glenn Youngkin keynoted an April groundbreaking event at the old Norfolk and Western Cambria passenger station in Christiansburg. He was joined by U.S. Senator Tim Kaine; Shep Miller, Virginia Secretary of Transportation; 9th District Congressman Morgan Griffith; Mike McClellan, Senior Vice President of Norfolk Southern Corporation; D.J. Statler, Executive Director of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority (VPRA); and numerous state legislators and local leaders who pushed for the service expansion. The VPRA is planning to extend Amtrak’s Northeast Regional service line that currently ends in Roanoke. The New River Valley will become the southern terminus for the line that serves all major cities along the Mid-Atlantic and Eastern Seaboard including Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston. Construction began in May with Norfolk Southern Railroad — under contract to the VPRA — responsible for all renovations, including track improvements, updated signaling, access roads, a parking lot, and boarding platform with canopy. Once service begins, estimated sometime in 2027, the historic Cambria Station will be renovated under auspices of the New River Valley Passenger Station Authority. The old Norfolk and Western station began life in 1906 and delivered passengers until 1979. More than 12 years in the making, the regional effort to restore passenger rail service began in 2013 under the NRV Passenger Rail Initiative, composed of every municipality in the New River Valley along with the NRV Regional Commission, Virginia Tech, and Radford University. This same group also established the NRV Passenger Station Authority, which will refurbish and operate the station. Local leaders observed the success of the Lynchburg service, which began in 2009 and the Roanoke service, which launched in 2017. “It was not lost on us that the state of Virginia was committed to investing in passenger rail, and we saw the tremendous demand beginning with Lynchburg service. Although the state had set aside subsidies to kickstart the effort, strong ticket sales meant that the service was in the black from the beginning,” said Ray Smoot, cochair of the local effort and Salem District representative to the Commonwealth Transportation Board. Lynchburg ridership was projected at 30,000 riders for the first year, but more than 100,000 passengers boarded and deboarded. Passenger rail expansion has seen bipartisan support from the beginning and continued through Democrat and Republican administrations. Today, Virginia is widely known as a national leader in restoring passenger rail service. The state has a dedicated annual funding source for passenger rail, is building a new $2.3 billion bridge across the Potomac River to alleviate current bottlenecks, acquired track and right-of-way from CSX Corp. in a $3.7 billion deal in 2021, and acquired track and rail from Norfolk Southern in 2025 that enabled the new service to Southwest Virginia. VPRA — an embodiment of the state’s commitment — manages it all through its Transforming Rail in Virginia initiative. Passenger rail ridership in Virginia continues to increase, with more than 1.4 million passengers in Fiscal Year 2025 — an all-time record for Amtrak Virginia, the state-supported effort overseen by the VPRA. The Roanoke route, which will ultimately extend to the New River Valley, saw the most growth with an almost 7 percent increase, totaling 361,420 passengers for FY 2025. “We expect to see similar demand from our region, particularly from visitors and college students. The NRV Regional Commission conducted studies that estimated about 40,000 passengers per year. The station is centrally located and will be serviced by local mass transit,” said Ann Cassell, president of the Blacksburg Partnership, which has staffed the local initiative since its inception. The estimated cost for VPRA’s New River Valley project is $264.5 million. When service begins in 2027, the New River Valley Station will offer two daily roundtrips to Washington D.C., with stops in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Culpeper, Manassas, Burke Center, and Alexandria — and, of course, to those other cities along the Northeast Regional line. Larry Hincker is retired Chief Communications Officer at Virginia Tech and has been leading the marketing and communications efforts of the NRV Passenger Rail initiative since 2013. Ground is broken at the Christiansburg passenger rail station. V
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