New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad
Former American railroad
The New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad (reporting mark NYP&N) (Nicknamed the "Nip and N") was a railroad that owned and operated rail lines on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia connected by its ferries and barges to Norfolk, Virginia, Old Point Comfort and Portsmouth, Virginia where it owned less than a mile of railroad. It built the line from Pocomoke City, Maryland to Cape Charles, Virginia and an extension from Townsend, Virginia to Kiptopeke. It was always affiliated with the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), but was taken over by the PRR in 1920. In 1968 it was absorbed into Penn Central. The track between Delmar and Hallwood, Virginia on the main branch and for 1.2 miles south of Kings Creek on the Crisfield Branch is still in use, but the rest is abandoned.
History
Concept and planning
Shortening the trip between Philadelphia and Norfolk had been a goal of many businesses dating back to the early 19th Century. In 1825 people travelled from Philadelphia by boat to dover and then by coach overland to Seaford, switching back to steamer to Norfolk. Later the Delaware Railroad (DRC) replaced the coach with rail. Later the DRC was connected to Wilmington, but it still did not succeed as expected.
The idea of a railroad on the Eastern Shore of Virginia dated back to the 1853 when the North and South Railroad was chartered by the Virginia legislature.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad” as former American railroad. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16982735. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1968, 1825 and 1853.
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This entry incorporates text from “New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.