[VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts] "Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren...

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Thu Apr 21 22:41:57 EDT 2011



In a message dated 4/21/2011 7:09:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
gkholine at cox.net writes:

Last Saturday, in the Roanoke area, the Blue Ridge Marathon, possibly the
most grueling 26 mile+ race in the nation, was held in a driving rain
storm. My friend Rae Brown sent me a photo of a friend of his, who won a trophy
in this race, that was donated by NS, made form a rail spike. I showed the
photo to the Brethren. Also passed around was the latest copy of the
"Oriskany Grapevine" with the cover story "Granddaddy Newton's Trains", written
by my borther Mike. This article tells the story of the now abandoned C&O
rail line and train that ran betwen Eagle Rock and New Castle, VA. I helped
him research this article with the input of our good friend Louis Newton who
wrote the book "Rails Remembered" which documents this line. Several of
the Brethren remembered when the line was in operation.




=========================================
I've deer hunted in that area along the old C&O right-of-way for many
years, in the National Forest. One of our deer camp members, the late Bill
Peters, grew up in that area and he told me that about 1945, a train of cattle
cars loaded with deer from Pennsylvania stopped and unloaded a car or two
of those deer at various points along the line. Those deer were the
beginning of a restocking effort in that part of Va., from which deer had just
about disappeared in the 1930's.
Bill also had a sort of N&W connection; as a young man, he worked in his
uncle's soda bottling plant in Roanoke. The plant had a spring on the
property, which is now covered over, and he said his uncle's plant provided
drinking water for N&W passenger trains from that spring.

Greg Harrod
Fredericksburg, Va.
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