 However, financial difficulties prevented the B&O from its ultimate goal of reaching Salem, where it could connect with the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad (V&T), which became part of William Mahone's Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio Railroad (AM&O) in 1870.The AM&O extended about across the southern tier of Virginia from Norfolk, to Bristol.In 1881, the B&O's plan to reach all the way south to Salem effectively became moot when the expanding Richmond and Danville Railroad took over the Virginia Midland Railroad, the successor to the O&A and Manassas Gap Railroads, which the B&O had acquired during the 1860s.