How Much Traffic on the VGN Narrows-Roanoke ?

[NW Mailing List]

Comrade Raymondo and Friar Bruno in Swartzstaettel, Excellencies :

Thank you for your fine updates on traffic now moving over the VGN. It will be very interesting to see how all this plays out in the next 10 or 15 years, will it not... ?

No doubt the Lord Keeper of the Holy Bottom Line would be quite glad to dispense with the entire VGN R/W between Narrows and Salem. My guess is that he does not want to hang his whole bag of turnips on a hope of perpetual well-being for the N&W single track Low Grade Tunnel (between Pepper and Belspring,) and that the availability of VGN's Merrimac Tunnel gives him an ace in the hole.  Any serious maintenance required on Low Grade Tunnel could indeed be the cork-it-the-bottle for NS operations, for a L-O-N-G time.

One wonders how much tax liability the Folks in Atlanta avoided by selling to the Commonwealth the VGN's R/W between Merrimac and Salem. Do any of the Ye Listers know how Virginia taxes one mile of Class 1 main track and R/W?  That should be public information.

Retirement be blessed, ain't it... ?

-- abram burnett,
        Turnip Denier