"Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren by Skip Salmon

[NW Mailing List]

Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with seven of the Brethren
and Friends of the Virginian Railway.  Let me take this opportunity to
thank all of you who responded about my grandson Hunter, who is stationed
now at Fort Hood Texas.  He is doing fine and recently sent a photo of
himself posing in his brand new cowboy hat, shirt and boots.  He loves
Texas...



A lot of the discussion of the night was about the recent demise of the
Randolph Street tower at the west end of Roanoke Shops.  This artifact has
now gone the bull dozer route.  There was some  interest in trying to save
the building (some of the contents were rescured I understand).  Because of
the location and nearby bridges, moving it was a very big undertaking, and
NS is in high gear changing out the old color position signals for the
"stop sign Darth Vador type".  Also the "S" curves just west of the tower
are being eliminated to increase speed of trains to 30MPH through
town.  The Brethren are wondering what might be next for the scrap heap.  I
understand lots of the old signals are being donated to the Virginia Museum
of Transportation.



For Show and Tell I took the April-May-June "The Arrow" magazine of the N&W
(and VGN) Historical Society. Page 6 and 7 shows the N&W's 1957 8' X 16' HO
layout of the line.  Also in the article there was a mention of a Virginian
Railway layout.  Anybody out there know anything about that one???  This
reminds me of once in the 1970s (I think) at Roanoke Locomotive Shop, we
had a layout made of the shop for an inspection tour of Company Directors.
We even had lines on the floor for them to follow so they would not miss
anything.  Just as they entered the Erecting Shop, we lifted an Alco C-630
off her trucks and naturally, every one of the Directors followed the
Alco with heads looking up and ignored the lines on the floor.  We did get
them back to the model....don't know what ever happened to it though.



I haven't been watching ebay much lately, but an item that was sold  was
mention to me, so I checked on some recently sold VGN stuff:  1908 VGN Pass
of C. H. Hiner for $108.75; Pile of VGN date nails for $35.00; H. Reid "The
Virginian Railway" hardback book for $39.00; 1955 passenger schedule for
$7.00; 1937 AND 1943 public timetable for $21.49; Virginian concrete
whistle post for $465.59; and a marbled "STOP" sign said to come off the
VGN for $455.00.



Then there's this:  Two Irish nuns have just arrived in the USA by boat,
and one says to the other, "I hear the people in this country actually eat
dogs."  "Odd," her companion replies, "but if we shall live in America, we
might as well do as the Americans do."  As they sit, they hear a push cart
vendor yelling, "Hot Dogs, get your dogs here," and they both walk towards
the hot dog cart.  "Two dogs, please," says one.  The vendor is very
pleased to oblige, wraps both hot dogs in foil and hands them over.
Excited, the nuns hurry to a bench and begin to unwrap their 'dogs'.  The
mother superior is first to open hers.  She begins to blush, and then,
after staring at it for a moment, leans to the other nun and in a soft
brogue whispers: "What part did you get?"



Time to pull the pin on this one!



Departing Now from V248,



Skip Salmon



DXII







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