Virginian in 1909--1st Coal Train

[NW Mailing List]

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
April 5, 1909

OAKVALE NEWS NOTES
------
Correspondent Complains of Monotony of Passing Coal Trains

    Oakvale is the train inspecting point on the Norfolk and Western road.  All coal trains stop and are overlooked.  How monotonous this becomes to the people who live along the tracks.  Day and night this work goes on, for the twenty-four hours thirty or forty trains stop at your door, pop off their steam and shower down coal dust over you and move on to give place for others.
    The first solid coal train on the Virginian passed down one day this week.  This is the train that was met at Sewell's point by Mr. Rogers and other officials when the big celebration occurred Friday.
[Four non-railroad paragraphs are omitted here.]
    People along here are very anxious to see passenger trains running on the Virginian.  This will put them in connection with Princeton, the capital of the county, without having to hack it over the mud and hills of Mercer.
------

[The observation of the first full VGN coal train is probably dependable.  People around a rural place like Oakvale in those days probably were quite observant of railroad activity .  Also, I had never heard of Oakvale being an inspection point where N&W trains were "overlooked."  I suspect that trains stopped there to have the retainers turned down after descending the ruling grade out of Bluefield.]  

Gordon Hamilton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20090224/6eb2a8d3/attachment.htm>