N&W Train No. 18

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

I agree with Ed and Andre both on this one!  It surprises me at the people who think the line from Bristol to Walton is relatively a strait line.  Go through the Archives and order a track chart.  Yes, its very dated, like in the 30's I think, but guess what?  It's UNCHANGED!  There's never been any realignment on this line that anyone knows of.  Curve after curve, upgrade, downgrade, upgrade, etc.  I look out my back window and I can see a sharp curve to the northeast and a 700' stretch of strait with an even sharper curve through a rock cut to the southwest.  And, it's steep.  Eastward trains of any decent size have a pretty good pull out of Seven Mile Ford up toward Marion.  Like Ed said, there's Rural Retreat Grade, not to mention Clark Mountain, which is also a pretty hard climb out of Max Meadows.  I don't even have my charts in front of me, but I can remember these easy, not to mention all the ones I forgot.
  Yhea, maybe the ACL did it faster, but, did they have to fight the same conditions?  My point is, I don't think you can make a fair comparison.
  Ben Blevins

nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org wrote:
  Come on, Bill. Your ACL trains were running on a pool table - few curves, 
no grades to speak of. #18 between Bristol and Roanoke had to face grades 
up to 1.3% and a lot of restricted speed due to curvature (40MPH was the 
maximum going down Alleghany Mountain, for instance); the maximum speed 
limit was 65 MPH. The highest point was just west of Rural Retreat, Va., at 
an elevation in the neighborhood of 2550 feet above sea level after starting 
out at Bristol at just over 1600 feet. And Rural Retreat was just the 
highest of several summits to be conquered. What was the highest elevation 
between South Rocky Mount and Florence? Two hundred feet? Three hundred?

Put ACL operating practices and motive power on the Bristol-Roanoke run and 
they'd take a lot more than 207 minutes to make the trip. Whatever your 
feelings about the R-1 4-8-4, it wasn't designed to cope with that kind of 
gradients and curvature. N&W's J was designed for them.

EdKing
----- Original Message ----- 
From: 
To: 
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 8:09 PM
Subject: N&W Train No. 18



> Harry Bundy calculates that N&W passenger train No. 18 ran the 151 miles

> between Bristol and Roanoke in 207 minutes. The ACL had several name

> trains such as Nos. 1 and 2, the East Coast Champion, that routinely ran 

> the

> 172 miles between South Rocky Mount, N.C. and Florence, S.C. in 160

> minutes, or two hours and 40 minutes. You tell me who the speed merchant

> was in this situation. Bill Sellers

>

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