N&W in 1912--2 Winter items

[NW Mailing List]

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
January 16, 1912

TRAIN FREEZES TO TRACK
------
Takes Three Engines Nearly Three Hours to Budge Cars at Lynchburg
    A dispatch from Lynchburg, Va., dated Sunday [January 15] says:
    "The Norfolk and Western Railroad's [sic] fast Washington-Chattanooga train actually froze to the tracks when it stopped here today.
    "Dripping water from the pipes hardened quickly in the zero weather and the wheels were locked so securely in the ice that three engines bumping the train from the rear were required to move it.  At that, two and a half hours were lost before the train could be budged and it arrived at Bristol, Tenn., seven hours late."
------
Bluefield Daily Telegraph
January 17, 1912

THE GRAHAM DAILY NEWS
------
Coldest Day of Winter
    Monday night [January 16] was the coldest yet in Graham during the present spell of winter weather.  The thermometers varied slightly in different sections of the town, but four below was the coldest recorded anywhere here.  At Tip Top the agent reported at 7 o'clock yesterday morning a temperature of sixteen degrees below zero.  Tip Top is the highest point* on the Norfolk and Western railroad [sic], and about the coldest when it is cold.  Bulletins announcing the approach of the cold wave were posted over the town yesterday by the observatory of the Graham Daily News and the people had prepared themselves for the sudden drop of the mercury, and as a result no serious effect from the severe cold was reported.
------
*Elevation at Tip Top on the Clinch Valley line is 2,748 ft.  Although White Top on the N&W's Abingdon Branch had an elevation of 3,576 ft., in 1912 that line was the Virginia-Carolina RR, which did not officially become part of the N&W until 1919.

Gordon Hamilton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20110812/0426bef3/attachment.html>