Evolution of Appalachian Railroads 1945-2005
The evolution of coal-hauling railroads in the Appalachians is fascinating, especially over the last 60 years. Six years ago, Appalachian Railroad Modeling published its first map of the coal fields and railroads circa 1950. While it was informative, these four maps go well beyond the original to show how Appalachian railroading changed over time, and together they tell a fascinating story of growth, downsizing, consolidating and rebirth. Based on the resources I had, it was difficult to tell when certain lines were abandoned, especially in the 1945 and 1970 maps, so many of the dashed lines in the 1945 map may have been active, and many of the dashed lines in the 1970 map may have been abandoned decades before. I learned … Read more
R.J. Corman’s Pennsylvania Line operates a coal train between Rosebud Mining’s Stifflertown, Pennsylvania mine in southwestern Clearfield County and their Bigler coal preparation plant in northeastern Clearfield County. It’s a 60-mile run using SD40-2 variants (SD40-2s & SD40T-2s) and 100-ton coal gondolas, formerly handled by a multitude of coal trucks (locally referred to as “coal buckets”) over public highways. The over-the-road transport was labor intensive – rail transport over already-existing rail lines was a logical step. Loading the train at Stifflertown is performed by front-end loaders at a coal dock, with the … 
Working the N&W’s Norton yard in Southwestern Virginia required sets of six-axle locomotives. The yard has a 1% descending grade from west to east. Tracks 1 thru 8 (original numbering) hold 40 hoppers each; at 100 tons each, that is 4000 tons. One six-axle unit at Norton couldn’t handle much more than switching the caboose track. One Dash-8 would not even pull the 21 loads out of Norton Coal (switch off N&W Main at the east end of yard that crossed the Miller Yard Main of Interstate in Norton).
The diesel era helper operations on the South-end up to Altapass were really interesting. I think the pushers at least for coal trains often tied on before Erwin–maybe Johnson City or even Kingsport. I can remember seeing pushers cut into coal trains north of Erwin, but this was before the JC cutoff was built. I don’t know that they ever cut off at Poplar or were put on at Spruce Pine. I suppose that there could have been an occasional boost from the Spruce Pine switcher but doubt that it was a planned operation.