Railfanning 6-25 to 6-27, 2011, Part 2

Hi, This is the second and final post for this long weekend. We pick up at Alderson, WV with N672, eastbound coal loads.

About an hour later westbound coal empties show up. Amtrak's Cardinal is already 10 minutes late.

About 10 minutes later the dispatcher crossed G980 over from track 2 to track 1 and sent it east.

Finally, the westbound Cardinal arrives, almost 4o minutes late. This ended our day's activities.

Monday, June 27 dawned perfectly clear in Beckley, WV, where we spent the night. Our first target was the R.J. Corman operation that operates the former CSX branch out of Thurmond. WV. We headed to Pax, WV where there was an active coal loader to begin the hunt. An empty coal train was arriving as we got to Pax. We could not see its power, but assumed it was CSX so we went looking for R.J. Corman's locomotives; to no avail. We followed the line all the way to Thurmond, passing the railroads office on the way, but did no engines. Moreover, there was extensive track work underway that must have started immediately after the empty train had cleared. This did not bode well for the loads leaving the mine any time soon.

When we arrived at Thurmond, WV Dale was able to find out an empty and a loaded coal train would meet in front of the depot. N670, the westbound empties, arrived first.

A few minutes later T677 went east.


Then N670 resumed its westbound journey.

As there was nothing else close to us we headed east, had lunch, and stopped at Ronceverte, WV again. We were rewarded with T227, a Newport News, VA bound coal train with 150 loads. It pulled up in front of the coaling tower to pickup a helper.


We elected to pick up an angle at White Sulfur Springs, WV we wanted,

and then moved a few hundred feet west for the helper.

Beating the train to Moss Run, VA was easy.

At this point we needed to head for Dale's house as he was going to work that evening. However, on the way we encountered westbound coal empties on the Buckingham Branch RR which we were able to photograph at North Mountain,

and at Craigsville, VA.

After this shot we headed for Dale's and dinner. I then began the long drive home. It was a really enjoyable weekend and I hope you enjoyed the photos.