N&W in 1907 -- Exposition Special

[NW Mailing List]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 1:57 PM, Vince wrote:


> Well, was back home for a visit in April, and noticed a street sign into

> some (relatively) new apartments that said "Schooler Hill Drive". About 1/2

> mile north of Rt. 600 / Rt. 114 intersection, which would have been the

> highest elevation on that section.

>

> What I'd like to find now would be track maps from 1860-1901 showing the

> path of the track from the "old bridge" at Radford burned during the war and

> Schooler Hill. Page 5 of the "Class J" book published in 2000 shows a photo

> from 1887 showing the re-built bridge. But I can only guess at the path of

> the line between those two points.

>


The bridge that was burned was the original Virginia and Tennessee bridge
that connected
Radford to Bristol. It would have been replaced not long after the war
ended.  When the
original line was struck from Radford to the coal fields at Pocahontas, a
new bridge was
built (and the other replaced/upgraded) to cross the New River. The piers
for this bridge
still exist.

When you cross the Memorial Bridge from Radford (U.S. 11) there is a road to
the
left right at the end of the bridge. This is the former right of way for the
original line.
If you travel a short way down that road, it will go from a flat elevation
to a pretty
quick downhill, eventually going under the existing trestle. The end of the
bridge
was somewhere in that transition. On the right (hillside) from this
transition along to
where today's tracks come off the bridge is a bench that carried a track
that completed
a wye.

[Does anyone know when this wye track and the second bridge were fully
abandoned?
Was everything taken out of service with the completion of the Walton/Cowan
line? Or
was this piece kept in service for a while, which could explain how the
Exposition
specials served Radford -- run forward from Walton to Radford, cross the
river and
turn on the New River wye, then run forward back through Radford and on out
of town.]

Back to the end of the road bridge -- on the right side of the road, there
used to be a
Taco Bell or something, just beyond where a road went up into the
residential area
of Fairlawn. The construction of the new Memorial Bridge changed this area,
but
at one time there was a bench that showed where the track used to be. The
line worked its way up through that area, which has been changed
considerably
with improvements to U.S. 11 and construction of various businesses.

On up U.S. 11, just beyond the Wilco, Advance Auto, and a few other
businesses,
Va. 600 takes off to the right. That is where the line continued to climb,
heading
toward today's crossing of VA 114 and on out 600 toward Belspring. Because
of
changes in Belspring, it isn't clearly apparent where the line crossed the
bottom
land there and tied in to the existing line.


>From a Table of Elevations from a July 9, 1886 letter to F. J. Kimball:


Central1773 New River1768 Schooler1910 Belspring1769 Tyler1692 Back Creek
1690 Benton1653 Eggleston Springs1644
(see http://filebox.vt.edu/users/bharper/nwrwy/NWElevations.html)

Bruce in Blacksburg
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