"Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren by Skip Salmon

[NW Mailing List]

Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with nine of the 
Brethren and Friends of the Virginian Railway. I told the Brethren about 
traveling to Whitethorne, VA last Saturday morning, in search of a 
derailment on the old Virginian. The lead locomotive of an eastbound 
coal train hit a mud slide late Friday afternoon, causing it to derail. 
The second unit turned over on its side, but there were no injuries, and 
no coal was spilled. All I found was the unusual sight of a coal train 
in the siding at Whitethorne, with no power attached.

Passed around was the July "Trains" magazine, which is "jam packed" with 
Norfolk Southern stuff. Several interesting facts came out while reading 
this issue and I passed these on to the Brethren: The coal business is 
"booming because of a severe flood in Australia and disruptions around 
the globe" and NS is calling 42 locomotives back from storage. They are 
leasing another 50 as well. Page 22 has a photo of one of the 100 new 
EMD SD70ACes ordered by NS. These are numbered in the 1000-+ series. 
These numbers looked sort of odd to us, because the last N&W road 
locomotives numbered in the 1000 range were Alcos! There was a 
discussion among the Brethren about "Trains" Grand Prize winner of their 
2010 Photo Contest...see page 38, "not much" was the general response. 
Also passed around for the Brethren to peruse was the Winter 2011 "NRHS 
Bulletin" featuring EMD SW1s and some great rail photos from the Pacific 
Northwest.

The Jewel from the Past is from April 14, 2005: "Wis Sowder asked how 
far was it from Elmore to the Deepwater connection with NYC? 'Slick' 
Inge answered immediately 'about 60 miles'. Then he related a story 
about an engineer named Middleton who, when he got on the NYC to take 
the passenger train on into Charleston, would slow down because of the 
foreign territory and lighter rail. Seems he was sort of slowing up 
other trains since the passenger trains had priority. The trainmaster on 
the NYC called 'Slick' and asked if he could get Middleton to 'step it 
up'. After Inge's instructions, he did 'step it up' and even 'clipped' a 
car that was crossing the tracks in front of the train. Not stopping for 
the accident, he commented later 'I'm gonna run like you said, even if I 
have to kill every --- over there'".

For "Show and Tell", I took my latest acquisitions at a local antique 
store: A Wabco crossing gate and crossbuck tie bar, and EMD paperweight 
of a GP-30, a small flat knife/file from Alco, a gold plated money clip 
with a knuckle on it, and the "creme de la creme" a 4-34 short globe 
Virginian Railway lantern serial number K-770. The owner of the antique 
store bought the lantern from the granddaughter of a VGN brakeman.

This week has been exceptionally hot in Roanoke. When we met at the 
restaurant last night, the temperature was in the mid 90s. I asked Wis 
Sowder if it was this hot on Bent Mountain, where he lives. He responded 
"it was so hot yesterday, I had to feed shaved ice to my hens to keep 
them from laying boiled eggs". When I showed the Alco pocket knife to 
VGN engineer Raymond East, he asked "When I open it up, will black smoke 
come out?"

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon

CCCLXX


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