Dispatcher sheets in Archives?

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

August 4, 2006

Hello, all:

Are there dispatcher sheets in the Archives?  Or
elsewhere?  If so, approximately what years and
divisions?  It seems to me they would be the only
authoritative answer for a question such as the one
below.

Good afternoon,

Frank Scheer
f_scheer at yahoo.com

========================================
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 19:08:29 +0100
From: nw-modeling-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Intensity of freight traffic?
To: <nw-modeling-list at nwhs.org>
Message-ID:

<A2FE5E6F6C43A149AF3C357BAFFB67483A9ACB at CSD-EXBE-VS1.lsbu.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"

I'm trying to get some idea of the intensity of
freight traffic on the
N&W main lines during the period 1954-1958.

For instance, in a normal daytime period of, say, 3
hours, how many
freight trains would a railfan situated on Blue Ridge
be able to
observe? How many of these would be coal drags, how
many would be time
freights, and so on.

It's easy to work out from the passenger timetables
that there were
only 14 passenger trains in total crossing Blue Ridge
during the whole
day. Unless you chose your time carefully, you might
not see even one
of them. Despite the Arrow and the Pocahontas, the
real attraction for
many railfans must surely have been the freights and
the magnificent
articulateds which pulled them.

Besides Blue Ridge, other parts of the mainline which
especially
interest me are the New River valley at Narrows VA,
and the area of
Williamson WV.

Incidentally, are there available any track-plans of
the Roanoke,
Bluefield, and Williamson freight yards, as they were
in the mid '50s?

Many thanks to anyone who can satisfy my curiosity on
these matters.

Regards to you all,

Frank Hung