New book

[NW Mailing List]

New book chronicles railroad history in West Virginia 
            By BETH HENDRICKS
            The Herald-Dispatch 


                       
                        Join our conversation. Click here to add your view to this story  
                 
            HUNTINGTON -- Tri-State authors Jack and Kay Dickinson's latest book is right on track.

            The railroad history book titled "Trail of the Powhatan Arrow, the N&W's Big Sandy Line," chronicles the history of the railroad and the towns and villages between Kenova and Williamson.

                          
                    
            "I think there is a great story to tell about the early history of the N&W railroad through West Virginia," said Dickinson, who has teamed with his wife on a previous book about Wayne County. "No sooner had we finished the first book than we decided to explore this other aspect of the history of the area.

            "People have been very encouraging because so little has been written about the subject," he continued. "So many people have told me they're eager to read this book, to get their hands on this type of history."

            The 300-page hardcover book includes 200 photos and maps, many never previously published, and interesting tales of railroad detectives, African-American labor and towns that have since vanished.

            "We found a lot of fascinating stories when we started looking into this," Dickinson said. "We discovered that, at one time, more coal cars passed through Kenova than any other city in the world.

            "We also learned a lot about a prestigious passenger train in the same class as the 'Spirit of New Orleans' that used to run between Norfolk (Va.) and Cincinnati," he added.

            The couples' original desire in writing the books was to learn more about their own history. Both graduated from Crum High School, where they met.

            "There are days we'd get a lot done writing and then days we argued a lot, but we each managed to find the areas we liked to write about. We divide and conquer," explained Dickinson, who works in the Marshall University Morrow Library's Rosanna Blake Confederate Collection. Many fact-finding and research trip were made to Virginia Polytechnic Institute's N&W Archives, the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the West Virginia State Archive.

            The book is self-published by the couple using a printer on demand based in Michigan. To order a copy of the Dickinsons' book, write: Jack Dickinson, 6221 Highland Drive, Huntington, 25705. Cost is $25 plus $4 to cover shipping and handling.
           
     

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20070925/e7c27b21/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 1126 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20070925/e7c27b21/attachment-0001.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 43 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20070925/e7c27b21/attachment-0001.obj>