Beginning in 1816, the Virginia Board of Public Works began providing engineering and financial assistance to internal improvements around the state in transportation which continued during most of the 19th century.

This was a new east–west railroad chartered in 1904 with its right of way quietly secured in 1904 and 1905, so as to not alert the competition regarding plans to transport coal originated by its sister Deepwater Railway operating in southern West Virginia.

Both railroads were planned and built by the team of mining manager and civil engineer William Nelson Page and industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, and added a third Hampton Roads coal exporting railhead to the existing Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (with coal piers at Newport News) and the Norfolk and Western Railway's similar facilities at Norfolk's Lambert's Point.

According to author H. Reid in his 1961 book The Virginian Railway, investors recalled the rapid growth of Roanoke between 1882 and 1884, which had been nicknamed the "Magic City" when the Norfolk and Western (N&W) had established major facilities at the former bucolic location which had been earlier known as Big Lick.

They could also look to nearby Crewe on the N&W (about 20 miles away from Victoria) to see what a substantial volume of activity and employment a division point on a steam railroad could bring.

United States President Theodore Roosevelt, attending the Jamestown Exposition, was one of the VGN's earliest passengers, according to author Reid.

The new Norfolk Division offices of the railroad were on located on a second floor which was added to the original Victoria passenger station a short time later.

[5] Victoria's importance as a rail point declined sharply in the 1950s when the change to diesel-electric locomotives greatly reduced the labor and facilities needed.

Under combined operations, the through coal traffic was shifted from Victoria to the bigger road's main line through Crewe, Virginia, within commuting distance for N&W's Victoria-based employees.

Much like many other communities all across the United States, the end of steam railroading and the era of mergers and consolidation in the second half of the 20th century reduced rail-oriented employment opportunities and had a generally negative impact upon Victoria and the surrounding area.

However, the community and Lunenburg County proved resilient, and by the late 1990s, transportation employment represented only a minimal portion of the area's economy.

After several years of work, one of the last C-10 cabooses built in-house by VGN employees at the company's massive shops complex in Princeton, West Virginia in the 1950s was located.

Rail preservationist, historian, and photographer Kenneth Miller of Roanoke had purchased Caboose 342 in the 1980s, and working with his father, had carefully restored it over a period of years.

were engraved as a lasting tribute to the founders of the Virginian Railway, industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers and coal mining manager and civil engineer William Nelson Page.