N&W/CHW Elkton interchange and surrounding operations

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Wed Jul 17 09:09:04 EDT 2013


Brandon,
Cars destined for the CW are taken into Shenandoah by NS freights.
The CW operates a couple of crews out of Harrisonburg to Shenandoah to
pick up cars and return to Harrisonburg. The V92 is one train number.
Yard crews in Shenandoah will cut the CW cars out of a train. The CW
crews switch up their own trains mostly at the south end of the yard.
Also crews will come over to take unit grain trains to Hburg and return
empties to Shenandoah. Most of these unit train now come south from
Hagerstown and return the same way. Of course there is always the rare
train that arrives from Roanoke.
There used to be a passing siding at Elkton on the west side of the
main line. The north end of this siding was just south of MP H111 and
continued south past MP112. At the south end, where it joined the main
line, there was a crossover switch where the siding continued straight
into what was called the "Storage Track". At the south end of the
Storage Track was another crossover to the main line where the track
also continued straight into the spur for Monger Coal Co.
Before the grain business really boomed (because of large poultry
industry in the Harrisonburg and surrounding areas) to large numbers of
loads, there were only small numbers of misc. cars to be set off to the
CW. We set these cars off on the storage track at Elkton. At that time
the CW, being a "Short Line" only could come as far north on the N&W
main as Elkton to pick up their cars. They could not go into
Shenandoah. The CW would pick up their cars and set off cars for the
N&W to pick up. Later, after the big grain boom, large blocks of cars
were set off and picked up on the passing siding.
Later the siding/storage track/Monger spur was taken up and only
the "Bark Siding" (a short dead end siding on the east side of the
track) remained. An agreement was made whereas the CW crews were allowed
into Shenandoah Yard, but, could only handle their cars.

Jimmy Lisle


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