Walton Tower area

[NW Mailing List]

Dave

In the case of drawings and photos, the best place to start is our online archive search. Generally speaking, I am talking about the 1950-1959 era with steam power.

Here is a drawing from November 28, 1961 that shows the proposed track retirements at Walton Tower, and other changes.

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=160945

The wye is generally situated compass south (pointed toward Radford) and slightly northwest (towards Bluefield), the leg going to the northeast is the line towards Christiansburg.

Eastbound trains (except passenger) were pushed from Walton to Christiansburg, where the pusher cut off and returned to Walton or stopped at Vicker for water/coal. In the later steam era it was an improved Y5 or Y6 used for pushing, the earlier years was a mixed bag as far as I know. 

Time freights were timetable limited to 5,000 tons, so they may or may not have had pushers. That probably depended on how schedule was doing, in those days, time freight was really a scheduled operation.

Best
Ken Miller



> On Aug 6, 2018, at 2:23 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> In the Volume 34, No 1 (Jan-Feb-Mar 2018) issue of The Arrow are a couple nice features on the Walton Tower (BH) area which makes mention of a helper siding, but no supporting information.
> Where was the helper siding located?
> Can someone provide a track layout sketch of the BH tower area?
> Of the three routes around the tower (Radford, Bluefield, Christiansburg) which were serviced by the pushers?
> What class of steam power was usually situated there?
> In what direction was the helper employed?
> Was it used only for coal trains or did it include merchandise freights too?
> 
> Thank you,
> Dave Willis
> blt 1962, c/n 4
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