We've lost some great N&W shots

[NW Mailing List]

Howdy group ... 

 
I passed thru Bluefield last week traveling from near Charleston, WV back to NC ... and Bluefield -- the town, the yard, the McDonald's -- was great, especially for the rookie who accompanied me.
 
I say this part in response to the earlier comment on here about losing another signal: While I was pointing out the line split in Bluefield, VA -- Clinch Valley and Pokey lines -- I noticed that the old CPLs still were there for both the EB Pokey and EB CV. I would have poked around to check on other signals, but the darned RR kept us too busy racing after trains ... 2 hours, 6 trains.
 
My middle aged friend is relatively new to RRing and lives near, and knows a little about, the Spencer - Asheville line. So, he was bonkers when he saw the east end of Bluefield Yard and hardly took a breath thereafter. We saw a couple loaded unit coal trains drift out of the yard, nosed around the old coal tower (still spectacular), eyeballed the crest of the yard, and headed west. We spied what turned out to be a very healthy merchandise train near Falls Mill and chased it back to Bluefield's missing passenger station. That train stopped, so, we tried heading west again.
 
This time as we approached Falls Mill, I was going to show my friend one of my favorite RR shots ... the key building at Falls Mill and the N&W curve shot from the Rt 643 highway bridge about a quarter mile east of the Mill area. Well, almost as bad as the signals coming down, so too are many great old photo shots. Falls Mill looks great, but you have to drive right up to it to see it ... at least in a RR shot. You no longer can see the Mill from that corner (Rt 102 and Rt 643) by the bridge because no one is pruning the trees ... the shot is just another train coming thru a corridor of forest now. I ran across the same excess foliage problem again and again, especially as we tried to check out the Bluestone Branch horseshoe curve (around the Coopers Tunnel mountain) from up high across the river. Nope ... Nada. Somebody needs to get out there with a tree wacker or two and get a few green credits as the branches fall. 

BTW ... Over the years I've seen a lot of coal hopper cars stored on the Bluestone Branch (the abbreviated portion that stops at Coopers), but last week when we got close all we could see were big old yellow autoracks. I suppose there were 75 or more racks on the two tracks and I could not see how close they were parked to the switch off the mainline. About 15 minutes later I figured out just why so many autoracks were parked ... and I'd been thinking business, especially the auto biz had, nicely improved.
 
So, we toured Flat Top Yard and briefly chatted with a coal train engineer awaiting the passage of priority EB traffic ... he said he would be there a good while. We ran past the bustling burgh of Nemours, the old power plant between the river and the mainline, and slowed at the spot on the highway above the old Pocahontas Branch switch. Another coal train was parked down there awaiting the same traffic. He tailed off over the river bridge, into the foilage, and (barely seen) into the Coopers tunnel ... with, as it turned out ten minutes later, his FRED sitting on the west end of the Coopers Bridge. 

We managed a quick tour of Coopers up near the tunnel portal ... looking good ... lot of folks would like to move there, but little or no room remains. We buzzed over to Bramwell and found the town in good shape with the restored RR station in outstanding condition ... WOW! I did not see any rich old mansion owners milling around the streets with thousand-dollar bills falling out of their pockets, and, IMHO, the town sure needs a few Daddy Warbucks ... NOW. I say that because it really, really needs a good old steam train for that lovely passenger station. Any news on such goings on in that area?
 
Heading back we just missed an autorack train on the Coopers Bridge and I wondered if we'd catch her before reaching Bluefield because we still had to forge the hills and winding road of the Pocahontas tunnel area. But yes ... We caught him at Falls Mill and paced him most of the way home ... continually remarking that he had only TEN cars! TEN autoracks, a GP50 and a big GE. Yikes, NS may be up to its ears in biz here in NC, but TEN autoracks??? ... Hard to believe. So, we stopped short of Bluefield and went back to catch one of the coal trains. Back in town, we grabbed something Starbuck-stylish at McDonald's and walked across the street to check out the two coal drags ... no pushers ... just GEs on the front.
 
Anyway, Bluefield is just fine ... signals remain, trains run, and the railfans have smiles as big as a dead pig on the grill at Thanksgiving.


Bob Loehne
8007 Maxwelton Drive
Huntersville, NC 28078
800-611-1218 
oezbob at aol.com


Bob Loehne
8007 Maxwelton Drive
Huntersville, NC 28078
800-611-1218 
oezbob at aol.com




Bob Loehne
8007 Maxwelton Drive
Huntersville, NC 28078
800-611-1218 
oezbob at aol.com





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