NW-Mailing-List Digest, Vol 251, Issue 18

[NW Mailing List]

On Sat, May 17, 2025 at 5:56 PM

   5. Re: Chesapeake Western Railway today (NW Mailing
> ------------------------------
> Message: 5  from Jim Brewer
>
John and Herb's post led me to a search of Sanborn map for Harrisonburg;
> what a great model railroad it would be, albeit, not N&W!
>
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I couldn’t agree with Jim more.  Growing up in and around Harrisonburg and
the CW, that was railroading as I knew it.  Working on the CW section gang
while in college only cemented my love for the line.  Working for the NW
introduced me to big time railroading, but that wasn’t where my heart was.

Except for big, mainline railroading, the CW had it all at one time or
another, backwoods logging and little shays, lots of interchange, unusual
power, and lots of stuff with an N&W heritage, and if you are interested,
after the T-6's were retired and big power came into town, you even had the
Norfolk Southern's biggest power and foreign road units in Harrisonburg,
running off the hours.  There was / is a wide di\versity of traffic,
not just chicken feed, and now they get full trains of grain and feed for
the distribution center just south of Broadway.

I’ve collected a lot of CW information through the years, and being so
closely related to the NW has helped.  I’m planning an O scale version of
the CW, I described what I want to build in O Scale Trains, the Nov / Dec
2023 issue.  Not the Pocahontas Division, not even Elkton to Harrisonburg,
just the wye south of the Farm Bureau to the station.  And maybe when I get
past my latest project this letter will prompt me to get to work on what
I've told everyone I want to build for years.

David Ray

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