First Ribbon Rail on the N&W ?

[NW Mailing List]

Thank you, Mr. Miller, for the information that N&W first welded rail in 1941, for use around Bluefield.

My guess is they were taking the first steps in using "patch rail" for addressing excessive wear on the gauge side of the high rail in tight curves, at places like Jug Neck and that Trackman's Nightmare called the Pocahontas Division.

They were probably using acetylene gas to do this first welding.  One has to wonder how efficient that process was, and how gas-weld joints held up under heavy traffic.

In the 1960s and 1970s, I made a few trips (actually hunting expeditions) through the West Roanoke Roadway Material Yard and never saw anything which looked to be a rail welding line. Such could have been there, and I just did not know what I was seeing.

The first "continuously welded rail" I recall seeing on the N&W was on the Punkin Vine Fast Line, at Jondee, sometime in the mid-1970s.

I hope enough material comes to light some day to allow for a little article on the topic.  Everybody fixates on Engines, but the stuff trains ride on gets little glory.  My interest in the subject was piqued one day, decades ago when, at a place with the intriguing name Klapperthal Junction, the old Track Supervisor gave me an introductory lecture on track geometry, superelevation, underbalance, shouldered and unshouldered tie plates, and suchlike mysterious subjects.  This after we had some curves with 6" of superelevation and loaded grain hoppers, with their high center of gravity, were observed to be tilting out of their center plates when choo-choos stopped on the curves. Oh, Mercy !

Thanks again.

    -- abram burnett,

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