Rorer Narrow Gauge R.R. - New map info

[NW Mailing List]

Last winter, I took a group of NWHS railfans on a walking tour of the old
Rorer Iron Mines in SW Roanoke County. This land is still "unmolested" and
largely protected by the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the original entranceway
is facing development. However, with the economy on hold due to Covid-19,
the land is still sitting there with minimal excavation taking place. On
our field trip, I held to the idea that the narrow gauge wended its way up
behind the IHOP restaurant, up along the ridgeline to an elevation
consistent with modern-day Peakwood Drive.

Well, go ahead and mark your calendars, because on this date I'm here to
tell you that I was totally wrong. Yep, and I should have known better,
too! Several years earlier, I had visited the Virginia Iron Coal & Coke
archive at Radford University and secured several important documents for
my research. This attached map, which I had lost somewhere in my collection
of digital images, shows just how wrong I was.

This map shows the narrow gauge RR coming straight up Southern Hills Drive!
It is dated from the early 1960s at a time when the owners were planning a
new development which included a man-made "lake" which would have submerged
the original railroad path.

Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Stephen Warren
Roanoke
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20201026/2d558a13/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DSC_4166.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1047048 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20201026/2d558a13/attachment-0001.jpg>