Touring the Virginian & Ohio, Gauley Subdivision

We're at the Kingswood Junction, and it's just West of Santel Yard. We've modeled the western end of the yard here. The westbound trains would appear on the railroad at this point. We have the Allegheny Midland back here and the westbound train on the main here. We're at the location of Linndale. It's a small community, and we have two major industries here. We have CM Plastic company that makes containers, and we have Marshall Chemical, which is a blender of chemicals and they get their containers from CM Plastics. It is also the starting of the westbound grade. And the grade is right here, starts at this grade crossing. And we have a train the westbound train waiting to be cleared out of the siding. Here we are on the scene above Linn Creek. This is a 1.67% grade, and we got the merchandise westbound train working its way up the grade to New Garver at the summit. We're now at New Garver, which is the eastern end of the lap siding and also is the Summit. And we have the New Garver station behind me, and the turnout for one of the lap sidings, and a pair of crossovers here for crossing over into the north siding. In the helper pocket you'll see a pair of GE U25Cs. We're up at the Summit, and at the sidings. The back siding is the north, and the forward one is the south siding. And the south siding was added at a later time, so the bridges are separated so that they can construct this bridge without interfering with traffic running on the existing main and the north siding. We're on the descending grade. We're looping through and around above Robert's Creek and make us borrow and come on out and dropping down the grade. And this is the longest grade on the railroad, and it's a 1.65. Instead of having the two loops of the helix one right above the other, like everybody else would do, and some kind of a cylinder, Allen just took one more foot of space, and he moved the second turn of the helix out, so that you had enough room for a valley with a river in between the two turns of the helix. So it's not really a helix. It's just more of a typical mountain railroad. Here's a westbound train descending the grade and going through Robert's Tunnel. And then it will proceed through the mountain and reappear over here. And to tie these two together, we put this simulated mountain here, but subdued the lighting so it's not real obvious, but again it gives the feeling that they're tied together. The V&O mainline continues to descend the grade and crosses over the Greenbrier River and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad. And this is called Bristol Junction with the V&O. This is the South Marlinton area on the V&O. And this happens to be, the track in the foreground, part of the old main on the V&O it was able to utilize. We've got a lumber distribution here that sells to contractors and to larger dealers. And he buys the in carloads and doesn't store lumber. Ships it directly to the job sites or the dealers. We're still in South Marlinton. Here you may recognize this scene here. It came off of the previous V&O. A shingle plant. And a shingle plant is a nice industry to model, because it receives a lot of different types of raw materials and then some frayed out. And it received asphalt and shingle granules, sometimes talc. And then we also shipped some carloads of shingles out. And here is what was gonna be the downtown area for South Marlinton. And then the creek over here is the bridge represents the starting of the grade eastbound, and then the old main crossing over the stone trestle, And that becomes the yard lead for Undercliff Yard. We're now viewing the paper mill at a Undercliff Yard. It's a very large complex. A lot of industrial switching is done here. Paper mills are an excellent industry to model because of the variety of materials they receive. At the beginning, you saw tank cars, boxcars bringing pulp in . We also have a off spot track here to store cars that haven't been spotted. We have the roll paper and one segment of the building. Sheet paper here. And then we go on down to a powerhouse at the far end there. We're now here at the west end of the Undercliff Yard which you can see where it got its name from. It's a marshaling yard for the cold and traffic off of the Stone Creek subdivision, and also serves as a sorting and classification for cars for the local industries. We've used all number eight turnouts in the yards. In fact, the whole railroad is number eights except for the local industries. And as you can see, I'm standing next to the locomotive servicing area for the area here at Undercliff Yard. Just west of Valley Junction, we have a little Stone Creek viaduct here, and we're coming on around this curve in the foreground. This is new, but the track to the rear is a portion off of the old railroad. Some of you may remember this trestle near Dawson Spring and the old mainline ran under the trestle here and on into a tunnel. Off the main here at this location, we have the Malone wood chip facility. They load out wood chips. And in the background, you'll see the grade on the Stone Creek subdivision climbing towards the Brauer coal company. Here is one of the many trestles on the Stone Creek subdivision, which limit the load so we keep it down to lighter engines and cars. Here we've been following the Stone Creek, and this location is called Wynegate. We have the V&O splitting up into a siding and main that continues on into staging. And when the operator of the train is terminated, he leaves his train visible so he knows that it's stopped and safe. Above this crossing over the Creek and the V&O main is the Stone Creek subdivision. There's the Patrick turn that has just left the Wynegate area and is now passing the Otto Brauer Coal Tipple. This is the Patrick turn that's heading into staging and it will be a destination of Zack. It will be passing through the cut here and entering Ridge Tunnel. And now on the other side of Ridge Tunnel is Kingswood Junction where we started our tour earlier today.