End of N&W Passenger Service and the beginnings of Amtrak

[NW Mailing List]

Harry, very interesting but eventually, it did operate via downtown. Now I don’t know the ex-ACL and ex-SAL lines but in mid-1979, I did a week of management training at Secoast and from what I remember, it followed the route you described through Colonial Heights to connect to the N&W in downtown Petersburg. Looking at the area on Google Earth, you can see an abandoned right-of-way diverge between a creek (Swift Creek?) and Ellerslie Ave. and then head around Colonial Heights and cross the Appomattox River at a shallow angle before crossing the N&W. I was curious as to the routing so I asked when I was there.

Looking at the timetables preserved at http://www.timetables.org/, the 6/22/77 timetable lists the Petersburg station as the current Amtrak station for the Florida and North Carolina trains in Ettrick. The next one saved, 1/8/78, shows the stop in Petersburg as at Fleet St. and Grove Ave. which is west of downtown on the original N&W main via downtown.

-- 
Larry Stone
lstone19 at stonejongleux.com





> On May 20, 2021, at 3:27 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Shawn:
> An interesting item about route of "The Hilltopper" -- the original intent
> was southbound, for example, it would leave Richmond Terminal Station,
> travel on the former ACL main line to a point near Swift Creek, at
> Colonial Heights, then use ACL's Old Main Line to connect with the
> N&W at Appomattox Street Station in downtown Petersburg.  Then
> came a problem -- engineers estimated that to reconnect ACL to
> N&W would be $85,000.  So  the geniuses came up with a
> different plan -  Southbound, haul the train backwards to an N&W
> connection at Secoast (that's west of Petersburg).  Cut the lead CSX
> unit off at Secoast to  wait for the northbound "Hilltopper"   and the
> westbouond "Hilltopper" went west on the N&W with the Amtrak unit first out.
>                                              Harry Bundy
> 
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