Poor Captions

[NW Mailing List]

What has to take the cake for one of the worst railroad photo captions ever appears on Page 68 of the Images of America book on Bluefield, WV under a familiar publicity picture of the N & W's Powhatan Arrow.  The second sentence of the caption reads:

  The Powhatan Arrow, the eastbound train, and Pocahontas, the westbound train, ran day trips between Norfolk, Virginia, and Cincinnati, passing the half-way point at Tip Top in Tazewell County, Virginia.
I don't have to tell Mailing Listers that the Powhatan Arrow and Pocahontas were separate trains that each operated daily in both directions, but I'll point out that Tip Top is on the Clinch Valley branch, quite a ways from the mainline used by both trains.

What is disturbing about such careless writing is that some day this information may be taken as gospel by some historical researcher perusing this book.

Gordon Hamilton
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