Where Was Engineering Station 0 + 00 for the Radford Division ?

[NW Mailing List]

Unfortunately, N&W Time Tables gave distances between named stations, not Mile Posts + Tenths for locations. 

I am almost positive those "distances between stations" in the Time Table were provided by the Engineering Department. 

Originally, they were listed only with an accuracy of one digit to the right of the decimal point (an accuracy of 1/10th mile, or 528 feet.) Sometime around 1920, the system was changed and distances between stations were listed to two decimal points (an accuracy of 52 feet.) 

My question is: Where was "0.00," the beginning point for the system of measurement used for the Radford Division ? 

At first, I thought it must have been at the center line of the old "Union Station," the station which preceeded the presently existing station and approximately 340 feet west of it. But some initial measurements and calculations lead me to believe "0.00" must have been at the center line of Jefferson Street. 

Does anyone know for sure from what point these distances were measured? 

Strange things happen when you start asking questions like this. To use an example that is a bit removed from N&W turf, we had always believed that the PRR Main Line engineering stations were taken from "End of Platform" at the 1884 Broad Street Station in Philadelphia. However, some close, critical comparison of the numbers eventually revealed that engineering station 0+00 (the starting point for the railroad's entire system of numeration) was about 320 feet east of End of Platform at Broad Street. And when one measures outthat additional 320 feet, he is at the location of the original 1830s depot, which was gone by the 1860s ! Even the government required 1914-1921 Valuation Maps used this old, original starting point. The lesson is that once the engineers had a fixed point to start from, they didn't change it. 

So I am extremely curious about the N&W's "starting point" for the distances given in Radford Division Time Tables. Has anyone seen information which might give a clue? 

-- abram burnett 

=========================================== 
Sent to You from my Telegraph Key 
Successor to the MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH LINE of 1844 
=========================================== 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20161122/b3516b5a/attachment.html>