[VirginianRailwayEnthusiasts] "Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren...

[NW Mailing List]

In a message dated 4/21/2011 7:09:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
gkholine at cox.net writes:

Last  Saturday, in the Roanoke area, the Blue Ridge Marathon, possibly the 
most  grueling 26 mile+ race in the nation, was held in a driving rain 
storm. My  friend Rae Brown sent me a photo of a friend of his, who won a trophy 
in this  race, that was donated by NS, made form a rail spike. I showed the 
photo to  the Brethren. Also passed around was the latest copy of the 
"Oriskany  Grapevine" with the cover story "Granddaddy Newton's Trains", written 
by my  borther Mike. This article tells the story of the now abandoned C&O 
rail  line and train that ran betwen Eagle Rock and New Castle, VA. I helped 
him  research this article with the input of our good friend Louis Newton who 
wrote  the book "Rails Remembered" which documents this line. Several of 
the Brethren  remembered when the line was in operation.




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I've deer hunted in that area along the old  C&O right-of-way for many 
years, in the National Forest. One of  our deer camp members, the late Bill 
Peters, grew up in that area and he told me  that about 1945, a train of cattle 
cars loaded with deer from Pennsylvania  stopped and unloaded a car or two 
of those deer at various points along the  line. Those deer were the 
beginning of a restocking effort in that  part of Va., from which deer had just 
about disappeared in the 1930's.
Bill also had a sort of N&W connection; as a young man, he worked in  his 
uncle's soda bottling plant in Roanoke. The plant had a spring on the  
property, which is now covered over, and he said his uncle's plant provided  
drinking water for N&W passenger trains from that spring.
 
Greg Harrod
Fredericksburg, Va.
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