Pokey Vacation planned, need urgent info on the re-routes

[troy12n]

I am from Florida and have had a weeks long vacation planned for a few months. I will be up there from 11/9 through 11/18.

I however just heard about all of this construction and re-routes.

Reaistically, what am I to expect in terms of trains during this time? I hear they will be working on the tunnells, but does this mean they will be shutting down the lines?

I railfanned the Virginian from Roanoke to Deepwater during roughly this same time last year, and now really wish I did the Pokey last year

I have to assume they cant reroute any of the eastbound coal trains, so what am I to expect? If its going to be dead, I may end up just changing my plans and do the Clinchfield instead.

Also what should I expect in terms of fall color by then? I expect it will be well past peak

[Hoydie17]

The Pokey won't be "dead" but it won't be as lively as you'd probably expect either, I know some trains have been re-routed and others have been anulled indefinitely.  I remember reading somewhere that coal trains would only run in hours of darkness, and intermodal traffic would be fleeted in "windows" but I don't remember where that was. 

The Clinchfield will probably give you more opportunity to shoot, but the Pokey will give you much more variety.  Given the trackwork that'll be going on, I'd probably go to Clinchfield as traffic on the Pokey will probably be scarce in daylight hours. 

[JCagle]

From my understanding the annulled trains are running tied in with some of the other traffic, and the reroutes are only affecting a few trains at this time. The traffic will be down but not totally terminated until later if they are at all. From what I have been told there will be more reroutes later on in the project.

[stillbre]

I was talking a few days ago with a friend that went up to the Pokey last weekend.  He said he saw 12 trains while there, which isn't bad by any means, but dead for the Pokey.  He indicated that the MOW forces had a work window from 10am until 8pm which kills most the daylight sightings.