N&W 2-6-2

[NW Mailing List]

The typo in the discussion of Mikados (2-8-2)brought up a bit of steam
locomotive trivia.  I'm reasonably certain of the following:

On the three Pochahontas railroads, there was only one Prairie (2-6-2).
On the three roads there was also only one camelback.
They were the same locomotive.  It was on the Virginia Anthracite Coal and
Railway company, which was acquired by the N&W in 1911.  Lasted on the N&W
until 1918.  Classified as O-28 on the N&W.  The VAC became the Blacksburg
Branch.

Digging this up also led me to another fact.  The reasons for the VAC and
the camelback were a pocket of anthracite coal in Southwestern Virginia.
(Anthracite?).  There were at least two anthracite mines on the Virginian,
and at least one on the N&W.  On CoalCampUSA if you find Raleigh County,
Virginia, there's a picture of an anthracite breaker that, to my eye, looks
like it belongs in Eastern Pennsylvania.

As usual, if I got some of this wrong, let me know.  And, as usual, thanks
to Col. Jeffries, Richard Prince, and CoalCampUSA, for a lot of this
information.

Frank Bongiovanni
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20200404/b6716fb4/attachment.html>