"Taking Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren

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Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with eleven of the 
Brethren and Friends of the Virginian Railway. Attending for the first time 
was an N&W Radford Division road engineer friend of the Brethren, John 
Adkins. John had the Waste Line Express (Trash Train) that daily runs from 
Roanoke west, on the old Virginian to the Bradshaw Connection, and down the 
spur to the state-of-the-art land fill for Roanoke. Some say this is the 
"best run on the NS system".

Passed around was Virginian Railway Company Employee Time Table No. 13 
taking effect Sunday, May 11, 1930 at 12:01 o’clock A. M. This is a 
system-wide timetable from Sewells Point to Deepwater and all branches and 
sub-divisions of the VGN Norfolk and New River Divisions. This is a copy of 
the original, recently donated to the N&W Archives by Eddie Mooneyham.

At "show and tell" I showed my latest purchase from the local antique pool, 
an early Railway Express badge (pin back) number 2530. Landon and I 
discussed several Library of VA donated items found while working on Right 
of Way Purchases of land by the Virginian, starting in 1903, that we 
entered into the Archives System last week. One involved a piece of land on 
the Guyandot River near the mouth of Pinnacle Creek owned by Levi Lusk. Mr 
Lusk informed the VGN Chief Engineer that "the N&W have a wye crossing our 
line on this property, but have not as yet purchased the right of way and 
Mr. Lusk told Mr. Hines that he would sell this tract to the (Deepwater) 
railway for $1,000". Several more letters recorded many "midnight" and 
"keep this quite" deals where the Right of Way was purchased by the VGN 
"right under the N&W noses". Also we observed many land deals made at that 
time where the VGN purchased land from the Hatfield family (Carl, Lewis and 
Laura Hatfield), of the famous Hatfield and McCoy Feuds. I wonder if there 
were any firearms involved at the these sales...

There was a lot of discussion about articles in the Roanoke paper this week 
about VDOT holding up the Station Project because they did not approve of 
the bidding process. The local VDOT and our sponsor, the City of Roanoke, 
passed on the bid process but one lady in the VDOT contract department in 
Richmond took exception "by a glitch". The project may have to be rebid. 
More on this later. Ironically, the Monday "Roanoke Times" "100 years ago 
today" had a snippet "The new passenger station of the Virginian railway on 
the line of the railway just east of Jefferson street is rapidly nearing 
completion". This indicates that the completed station was not opened until 
1910...

The ebay report this time includes: Slide of VGN 2-6-6-2 #906 $18.75; 1910 
tall globe "VIRGINIAN" lantern (complete)$1,077.82 with 34 bids; 1910 VGN 
Public Timetable $115.27 and a set of three VGN passes and one VGN Safety 
First Pin for $57.00.

Beginning with this report, and since we have a lot of new readers lately, 
I will from time to time reprint significant or unusual items from long 
past previous reports. In keeping with the railroad theme, I will call them 
"Jewels from the Past", just like the jewels in a "Railroad Approved" 
pocket watch. This week's "Jewel from the Past": April 7, 2004, Landon 
Gregory asked us if we knew what the dispatchers and operators did to keep 
train orders dry when it was raining? The train orders were wrapped in 
waxed paper before they were attached to the hoop or stick to "transmit" 
them to the train crews.

Rufus Wingfield appeared last night with one foot bandaged up in an unusual 
manner. He had blistered his left heel with a heating pad, which his doctor 
confiscated. His doctor's bandage did not allow Ruf to make the trip and 
Take Twenty with us, so he improvised and "redressed his wound". He had a 
bedroom slipper covered with an ace bandage held on by rubber bands and 
duct tape. The only thing missing was gorilla glue, so we took up a 
collection for him to get some...

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon