3 Days in October: My first trip to the Pokey - Day 1.

[Hoydie17]

   I rose from the bed early on Wednesday morning, 29 October, the year of our Lord 2008, waited patiently for a friend to arrive from Maryland and then embarked on a 4+ hour pilgrimage to Roanoke, Virginia.  Central/Southwestern Virginia has some mighty impressive colors on the hillsides, most places are at peak, a few spots are really close, and many are past peak with some significant leaf drop.

      Our first stop was a spot on the old Virginian Railway called "KUMIS" which is often featured in Roanoke railfanning lore, where we captured the first train of our trip.   A waiting ECP train of empty hoppers was sitting on the siding awaiting the arrival of Eastbound loads and we waited about 45 minutes for the latter of the two.



From there it was back in to an area just East of Kumis called "Riverside" where we managed to shoot yet another Eastbound drag passing through one of the many rock-cuts at this end of the Virginian.



After shooting a few other trains, we latched on to a 23A leaving Roanoke heading for the Radford District and eventually Bristol.  Here we see him at Christiansburg and Radford, VA respectively.





While in Radford, a Westbound telemetry train came into town after the 23A cleared out of the way, the sun wasn't great, but they were going to yard the train, so I just took what I could get.



After that, we followed the Virginian mainline in the hopes of catching some activity, things got eerily quiet at this point and we went the better part of 3 hours before hearing or seeing anything until we got to Whitethorne, VA.  It appears as though the railroad allows this engineer to just keep the engines at his house and they call him for helper duty when needed.  Talk about having a convenient commute! 



After leaving Whitethorne, I decided to rely on the GPS to keep me on the backroads that would follow closest to the tracks.  As we rounded a bend, I saw that the hillsides were awash in fall color and the lighting would be good at this spot for an Eastbound.   So we pulled off into a private driveway and waited patiently, about 20 minutes later, we were rewarded with an Eastbound intermodal in McCoy, VA.



Upon departing McCoy, we went to Eggleston, VA hoping to shoot a train near the massive rock outcropping often seen at this locale, but the train never materialized, so we pressed on for Narrows, VA.   We found a very nicely lit bridge at Narrows hoping for a late day Eastbound to take the Virginian, unfortunately, our impatience got the better of us and we went down the road to Glenn Lyn hoping to catch an Westbound on the N&W which never happened.   On the way back to the bridge, we spotted an Eastbound coal drag with the only EMD we'd see leading on NS all week, it had crossed the bridge only moments before we returned. 

With the day fading out, we pressed on for Bluefield, WV with a quick stop in Oakvale just to take measure of what was going on.  I spotted a headlight in the distance and we decided to go for the late day glint shot on NS 274 coming East.



With that was our last decent shot of the day, and we retired to Princeton, WV for a good night's sleep. 

[JCagle]

Is it just my computer or are the pics not showing up?

[billworsham]

Didn't show up on mine either, just a bunch of   'x'   boxes.

[Hoydie17]

Works fine on mine, oh well, guess it's back to the old fashioned way of doing things.  . .  .  too much work to embed the photos anyways.

here's the link to the photos gents. . .

http://www.hoydie17.com/gallery/v/On_Rail/Recent/

[NS2593]

Sean, you have an error on the train symbol on a couple of your shots. The shots of what you call the 23A in Christiansburg and Radford are actually the 22A heading west toward Bristol. Nice shots too! It looks like you had a nice trip.

[Hoydie17]

Sean, you have an error on the train symbol on a couple of your shots. The shots of what you call the 23A in Christiansburg and Radford are actually the 22A heading west toward Bristol.

Thanks for the correction. . . wasn't incredibly familiar with the trains in that area.   

[JCagle]

Nice looking stuff there Sean. Looks like a nice trip with some color left.

[ThoroughBreed]

Some great shots there!
I'd like to get a full size copy of the roster shot of 8010, if you could email it to me. I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks, Eric

[Michael Knight]

Very nice shots, Sean! I'm glad to see that your first Pokey experience went so well!