Seaboard & Roanoke

The road connected with the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad and the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad at Weldon. Much of North Carolina's pre-war production was shipped out through Portsmouth, using this road. 

The start of the Union blockade of Southern ports was at Norfolk/Portsmouth, immediately after the blockade was announced. Traffic on the railroad dropped to almost nothing until the evacuation of the two cities in 1862 in the face of Union army movements. The Confederates retained and used a small rump of the road near Weldon and the Union used the rest of the road to maintain its forces in the Norfolk/Suffolk area.

The road's Superintendent, John M. Robinson, leased his rolling stock to other roads and took a commission in the Confederate army. In early 1863, he was sent to England as Special Purchasing Agent for five Virginia railroads and the Confederate government. No records have been located of the receipt in the South of whatever supplies he purchased, though one railroad mentions receiving some of his supplies and the fact that others were in Bermuda. He returned to the Confederacy in the fall of 1863 and surrendered at Appomattox.

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