By Ray Cox Special to The Roanoke Times An unspoken founding principle of this newspaper is it is always a good time to tell a railroad story. Such being so, we turn again to esteemed historian John R. Hildebrand, our conductor on previous excursions on the long defunct but never forgotten Valley Railroad. Hidebrand utilized an engineering background and his natural storytelling gifts to detail the history of the never finished line from Staunton to Salem in his 2001 âIron Horses in the Valley: The Valley and Shenandoah Valley Railroads, 1866-1882.â Therein, he detailed an episode of criminal misbehavior that had taken place during an earlier railroad-building era involving construction of the Virginia Central from Charlottesville to Covington. Known at the time as the âIrish Rebellion,â the Feb. 11, 1850, episode involved a violent labor dispute pitting workers from different regions in Ireland.