After nearly two months of no traffic, the rails of the CG Line were alive again with a T10! With 20+ loads from Four Rivers Coal in tow, T10 returns to Knoxville via the rain soaked Cumberland Gap.

This special T10 had great power with SD40E 6322 plus SD40-2's 3402, 3236. This was my first time seeing both an Admiral Cab and SD40E in Middlesboro coal service.

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it – the fact that He knows me. - J.I. Packer

On Pinnacle Rock, Cumberland Gap National Historic Park

I am looking southeastward from the most western point of Virginia. I believe that the tall mountain ridge in the very back is the silhouette of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Having left Kentucky at the Saddle of the Gap, we're in Virginia looking into Tennessee.

The Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is a U.S. National Historical Park located at the border between Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia centered on the Cumberland Gap and a natural break and pass in the Appalachian Mountains. Print size 8x10 inches. HFF.

A meteor that was a football field wide hit this mountain range 300 million years ago. The impact of the meteor blasted a bowl in the mountains. The great flat valley that was created, this crater, would become a good place in Appalachia for the modern city of Middlesboro, Kentucky.

It is tough crossing the mountain ridges that surround Cumberland Gap. In the 19th Century, a railroad spoke connected the small town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee to Harrodsgate, Tennessee. It was abandoned but what remains is this lovely pedestrian tunnel that goes under a 1200 foot ridge above it.

"The Cumberland Gap, she's a devil of a gap…Kentucky she's waiting on the other side!" — lyrics from the song Cumberland Gap by David Rawlings / Gillian Welch

It is easy to imagine Daniel Boone standing on this giant rock at Pinnacle Overlook. This morning the sun will rise above the horizon in a little over half an hour. Those clouds over Cumberland Gap, Tennessee are being sucked northward into Kentucky by wind through a funnel between mountain walls of the Cumberland Gap.

Scripture is the unalterable rule of holiness. - J.I. Packer

Those Appalachian mountains way in the distance that tower over everything else? Those are in North Carolina.

Do you see that gap between the Appalachian mountain I'm standing on and the mountain in the background? That's the Cumberland Gap. This is the gateway through the mountain walls that Daniel Boone used to enter southern Kentucky.

It's just before dawn. A cloud rolls over the town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee (lower left) and pulled through the Cumberland Gap into Middlesboro (middle right), Kentucky.

Now with eight loads of coal in tow, T10 heads South through Cumberland Gap.

A "little tunnel" slices through an Appalachian mountain to connect the towns of Cumberland Gap and Harrogate, TN.

Would you believe... that this is the very tunnel that Agent 86 walked through everyday on his way to work at CONTROL? Do not tell KAOS where this is.

🎵"Kiss me momma, kiss your boy...

For I won't be back til' I return

I'm gone to old Kentucky

Cumberland gap, it's a devil of a gap"🎵

–from the lyrics of Cumberland Gap by songwriters David Todd Rawlings and Gillian Howard Welch

"Kentucky, she's a waiting on the other side" — from the Cumberland Gap lyrics by songwriters David Rawlings & Gillian Welch

Middlesboro is a city in Bell County 1 mile west of the Cumberland Gap and is the largest city in southeastern Kentucky. The downtown Commercial District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Print size 8x10 inches. HSS.

As I looked down from a mountain top in Virginia into Middlesboro, Kentucky, I thought the clouds this evening would completely block the setting sun so that I would not be able to photograph a colorful sunset. But it was after the sun set that the lighting became particularly exciting.

I'm standing on the Pinnacle Overlook at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. The low point in the black "V" below is the gap between a long mountain wall. This is the place where Daniel Boone found his entrance into Kentucky. A revolutionary war against the British would shortly commence. Civil war battles from the new Republic would later be fought on this very spot because of its vantage point. This pinnacle would trade hands between the Confederacy and Union several times. The city of Middlesboro, Kentucky, which sparkles below, would be incorporated in 1890. And the valley below that Middlesboro sits in? It is actually an ancient meteor crater.

Shhh, make room for the fine art photographer at work with his two cameras (three if you count the smartphone in his pocket) and three lenses. By the way, that is my dSLR camera mounted on the tripod.

Tennessee is on the left. We are standing in Virginia. Kentucky is on the right and the Cumberland Gap is a straight drop below.

“Hey Bobby, I think I see Daniel Boone. Do you see him?”

With 18 loads of coal from Four Rivers Coal and an empty covered hopper from Blue Diomond, the Middlesboro turn NS T10 returns to Knoxville. Soon the NS 1093 and 9252 will begin the assault on Cumberland Mountain on their way to Cumberland Gap Tunnel.

What happened when a meteor a football field wide hit the forerunner of the Appalachian range 300 million years ago when the range was still the high mountain backbone of the Pangaea supercontinent?

A great wide valley, a bowl, was instantly blasted out amidst the mountains. As North America drifted away from Pangea, its tall mountains would be eventually brought low by gravity and its surface eroded. This wide Appalachian valley would become a good place for a city– Middlesboro, Kentucky.

The crater still remains as does the remnants of the meteor.

BTW, this scene from Pinnacle Rock would be the first good glimpse Daniel Boone would have seen of Kentucky, minus the buildings and roads. Boone had no idea he was looking at an impact crater.

..Kentucky she's a waiting on the other side

Give you the fever with the daylight in your eyes

– lyric excerpt from the song Cumberland Gap by songwriters David Rawlings and Gillian Welch

The 2,440 ft. Pinnacle Overlook offers views of three states: Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is a U.S. National Historical Park located at the border between Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia centered on the Cumberland Gap and a natural break and pass in the Appalachian Mountains. It was strategically important as a potential invasion route for both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. Print Size 13x19 inches.

It would not have been right for the restoration of human nature to be left undone, and…it could not have been done unless man paid what was owing to God for sin. But the debt was so great that, while man alone owed it, only God could pay it, so that the same person must be both man and God. Thus it was necessary for God to take manhood into the unity of His Person, so that he who in his own nature ought to pay and could not should be in a person who could… The life of this Man was so sublime, so precious, that it can suffice to pay what is owing for the sins of the whole world, and infinitely more. - Anselm

Picture by RTC2020

NS 4229's fresh paint shines in the morning light at Cumberland Gap.

The way to be truly happy is to be truly human, and the way to be truly human is to be truly godly. - J.I. Packer

Took his trusty old flint-lock

Daniel started shoutin', shoutin'

Kentucky she's a waiting on the other side

Give you the fever with the daylight in your eyes

Cumberland Gap, it's a devil of a gap

—Lyric excerpt from the song Cumberland Gap by David Rawlings / Gillian Welch

This photo was taken a few weeks ago in the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park at the Pinnacle Overlook, which is in the very edge of Virginia. To the right of Cumberland Mountain is Kentucky with Fern Lake in the distance. To the left of the mountain is Tennessee with the town of Cumberland Gap in the bottom left. The Gap, itself is in the bottom right corner under fog.

Looking over Powell River Valley of Virginia (left) and Tennessee (far right) to North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains (far background) from Kentucky's Cumberland Mountain at dawn, I stand on Pinnacle Rock of the Cumberland Gap. This is the valley where Daniel Boone passed through a gap in the mountains into the fertile land of Kentucky.

🎵"Daniel started shoutin', shoutin':

Kentucky she's a-waitin' on the other side

Give you the fever, put the daylight in your eyes

Cumberland gap, it's a devil of a gap"🎵

–lyrics from the song Cumberland Gap by songwriters David Todd Rawlings / Gillian Howard Welch

Daniel stood on the pinnacle rock

Lookin' up and down the mountain

Took his trusty old flint-lock

Daniel started shoutin', shoutin'

Kentucky she's a waiting on the other side

Give you the fever with the daylight in your eyes

Cumberland gap, it's a devil of a gap

—Lyric excerpt from the song Cumberland Gap by David Rawlings / Gillian Welch

And the coal trains are still running. There just aren't as many.

The imposing ridge wall kept Southern visitors out of Kentucky. This ridge runs for scores of miles. Although the place where I took this photo is outside the park, White Rocks is part of the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park.

Kentucky is waiting on the other side.

I don't know where these clouds originated. They seem to have come out of nowhere. My best guess is that they were created before my eyes from seemingly nothing by water vapor released from the sizeable Appalachian woodlands below. These clouds-from-nowhere were then carried by the wind over the Cumberland Gap from Kentucky to Virginia.

Stone steps along the Pinnacle Trail in the Cumberland Gap area of Kentucky and Tennessee. The Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is a U.S. National Historical Park located at the border between Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia centered on the Cumberland Gap and a natural break and pass in the Appalachian Mountains. It was strategically important as a potential invasion route for both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. Print Size 13x19 inches.

I drove up the mountain from Kentucky to this Pinnacle Overlook. Kentucky is to my back. The sun is rising right on the Virginia-Tennessee line, which border runs right down the middle of my photo. That sleeping village below should be Tazewell, Tennessee on the right. Virginia is on the left. The last range of mountains in the background, which the sun touches and that towers over the others, should be the start of the Smoky Mountains.

Civil War skirmishes were fought from where I am standing. This ridge exchanged hands from U.S. to Confederate, to the United States, to Confederate, back to the U.S..

Taken in October along the railroad in Cumberland Gap, Tn.

Kentucky was on his far right over the other side of the mountains.