611 Climbing To Asheville
For the next few Steam Sundays I'm going to present a series of sequential shots from this location featuring my most memorable experience shooting 'The Queen of Steam', Norfolk and Western Class J 4-8-4 611 during her round trip from Spencer to Asheville and return via the S Line and the famed Old Fort Loops across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Though she traveled this route many times during her first excursion career in the 1980s and early 90s this trip would turn out to be her one and only time traversing the route during NS' short lived 21st Century Steam program revival.
I missed her first rebirth in the 1980s and early 90s and fell in love with her when I watched one of the first railroad programs I'd ever seen on TV...National Geographic's stunning 1984 production, Love Those Trains. She had a brief presence in that show along with other legendary sights of railroading that I had no idea then that I would someday get to see for myself!
If you're at all curious and haven't seen that classic program it is a available on YouTube here: youtu.be/JhD-V2tXlYg
But I was too young when she was retired for the second time in 1994 and promised myself a few years later that if she came back for a third life I wouldn't miss her! And indeed I didn't. I was there in Spencer when Wick Moorman turned the ceremonial first wrench on the turntable at Spencer in 2014 and then again in 2015 to see her first revenue run as she stormed the Blue Ridge on 'home rails'.
But the best show ever was the following year when she made this trip from Spencer to Asheville via the NS S-Line and the famous Old Fort Loops. We hiked in on the Point Lookout Trail to this spot between High Ridge Tunnel and McElroy Tunnel. In these views I'm an shooting railroad east as she marches first through the 589 ft Lick Log Tunnel, catches a splash of sunlight then approaches us through rhe short 77 ft long McElroy T
This is a legendary eastern mountain railroad that was little remarked except by a dedicated few. I always wanted to visit this place and made it on two occasions....and I'm glad I did. Because in May of 2020 thanks the closing of the Linwood hump as part of the continued PSR driven traffic changes all through trains were removed from this route leaving only the daily round trip passage of the Asheville to Bridgewater local, which itself lost most of its traffic with the closure of the massive Canton paper mill in 2023. But seven years ago there were still two daily pairs of trains that traversed the length of the route along with occasional unit trains, extras, and re-routes.
The line is generally flat from Salisbury 111 miles west to Old Fort where suddenly it meets the thrust of the Blue Ridge Mountains and climbs 1000 ft to the Eastern Continental Divide at Ridgecrest, elevation 2535 ft. The top of the grade is only three miles as the crow flies from Old Fort, but it takes about 13 rail miles to get there. There are seven tunnels (including the 1832 ft long one at the summit) on the line and grades as steep as 2.9%. The train is seen here approaching MP 121 as it makes its way thru the second and third of five found in a mini tunnel district in the span of about 1 1/2 miles.
Completed by the Western North Carolina Railroad in 1880 the route ultimately came into the Southern Railway fold and was an important through route for nearly a century and a half. But now times have changed and the future is uncertain. However, the state of North Carolina has longed to bring passenger rail to Asheville via this route, so with the shift of freight traffic away now may be the time. I'm confident the rails here will remain, though the main focus of their economic utility may shift. Only time will tell.
To learn more find yourself of a copy the September 2006 issue of Trains magazine with a fabulous cover story on this line by the late Jim Wrinn. For a good map detailing this remarkable stretch of railroad check out this link from Trains: cs.trains.com/trn/b/staff/archive/2016/01/19/trains-chase...
McDowell County, North Carolina
Sunday April 10, 2016
611 Climbing To Asheville
For the next few Steam Sundays I'm going to present a series of sequential shots from this location featuring my most memorable experience shooting 'The Queen of Steam', Norfolk and Western Class J 4-8-4 611 during her round trip from Spencer to Asheville and return via the S Line and the famed Old Fort Loops across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Though she traveled this route many times during her first excursion career in the 1980s and early 90s this trip would turn out to be her one and only time traversing the route during NS' short lived 21st Century Steam program revival.
I missed her first rebirth in the 1980s and early 90s and fell in love with her when I watched one of the first railroad programs I'd ever seen on TV...National Geographic's stunning 1984 production, Love Those Trains. She had a brief presence in that show along with other legendary sights of railroading that I had no idea then that I would someday get to see for myself!
If you're at all curious and haven't seen that classic program it is a available on YouTube here: youtu.be/JhD-V2tXlYg
But I was too young when she was retired for the second time in 1994 and promised myself a few years later that if she came back for a third life I wouldn't miss her! And indeed I didn't. I was there in Spencer when Wick Moorman turned the ceremonial first wrench on the turntable at Spencer in 2014 and then again in 2015 to see her first revenue run as she stormed the Blue Ridge on 'home rails'.
But the best show ever was the following year when she made this trip from Spencer to Asheville via the NS S-Line and the famous Old Fort Loops. We hiked in on the Point Lookout Trail to this spot between High Ridge Tunnel and McElroy Tunnel. In these views I'm an shooting railroad east as she marches first through the 589 ft Lick Log Tunnel, catches a splash of sunlight then approaches us through rhe short 77 ft long McElroy T
This is a legendary eastern mountain railroad that was little remarked except by a dedicated few. I always wanted to visit this place and made it on two occasions....and I'm glad I did. Because in May of 2020 thanks the closing of the Linwood hump as part of the continued PSR driven traffic changes all through trains were removed from this route leaving only the daily round trip passage of the Asheville to Bridgewater local, which itself lost most of its traffic with the closure of the massive Canton paper mill in 2023. But seven years ago there were still two daily pairs of trains that traversed the length of the route along with occasional unit trains, extras, and re-routes.
The line is generally flat from Salisbury 111 miles west to Old Fort where suddenly it meets the thrust of the Blue Ridge Mountains and climbs 1000 ft to the Eastern Continental Divide at Ridgecrest, elevation 2535 ft. The top of the grade is only three miles as the crow flies from Old Fort, but it takes about 13 rail miles to get there. There are seven tunnels (including the 1832 ft long one at the summit) on the line and grades as steep as 2.9%. The train is seen here approaching MP 121 as it makes its way thru the second and third of five found in a mini tunnel district in the span of about 1 1/2 miles.
Completed by the Western North Carolina Railroad in 1880 the route ultimately came into the Southern Railway fold and was an important through route for nearly a century and a half. But now times have changed and the future is uncertain. However, the state of North Carolina has longed to bring passenger rail to Asheville via this route, so with the shift of freight traffic away now may be the time. I'm confident the rails here will remain, though the main focus of their economic utility may shift. Only time will tell.
To learn more find yourself of a copy the September 2006 issue of Trains magazine with a fabulous cover story on this line by the late Jim Wrinn. For a good map detailing this remarkable stretch of railroad check out this link from Trains: cs.trains.com/trn/b/staff/archive/2016/01/19/trains-chase...
McDowell County, North Carolina
Sunday April 10, 2016