Dry Fork/Pokey excursion

[butch]

Brent Harrison had been after me for a couple of years to hit the Dry Fork Branch out of Cedar Bluff VA with him and the stars finally aligned last week.  We met at 7a last Thursday morning in Claypool Hill and headed out.  It was cold with the remnants of the snow earlier in the week.   NS 744 was the only train we would see all day, but we had a good time exploring the five tunnels between Rift and Cedar Bluff, the big trestle near Amonate, the Beech Fork spur, and the Jacobs Fork Branch and tunnel.

Leading off is NS 744 emerging from the south portal of Dry Fork Tunnel 2, crossing the big trestle south of Amonate, peering out of the southern portal of the Summit Tunnel [T3], and a black-n-white version of the train coming out of that tunnel.

[butch]

Here is a trackside view of the trestle, the interesting larger than normal northern portal of the Summit Tunnel, and a Sperry vehicle-one of the many MOW units we saw that day.

[butch]

And the last two from the first day are Brent at the VA-VW state line and some rail on a maintenance siding where the Jacobs Fork leaves the Dry Fork at Rift that was stamped 1919.

[chipallen16]

Sweet shots, Butch! Those first two tunnel shots are amazing.

-Chip 

[butch]

Thanks Chip-

I had decided that I wasn't going to drive that far for just one day, so on Friday I explored the Pokey from Bluefield to Iaeger.  I was able to get to at least one portal of about 18 of the tunnels, but with it being a generally east-west line with inherant sun/shade issues and my desire to cover a lot of ground, I wasn't in the right spot for a train emerging from tunnel pix very often.  Here are a few of the better pix I took.

Eastbound approaching Elkhorn Tunnel, a K train at the Huger Tunnels, and coming out of Hemphill No 2 and heading into Hemphill No 1 in a couple of hundred feet.

[butch]

There was a set a pushers hanging out at Farm which gave me a good excuse to stop and shoot the old coaling tower.  On the old branch line at Roderfield, there was a work train with a second unit that looked to be very far from home.  And later as I reached Iaeger, I just had time to pull over and grab a couple of shots of this train passing by downtown.

[butch]

Back at Roderfield Tunnel, the one time all day that I waited on a shot was interesting.  I had seen a crew van back by Vaughn Tunnel and by the time I got to the west portal of Roderfield Tunnel, I could look back and see the lead locomotive.  I had good sun so I decided to wait a few minutes and catch it coming through.  Well 45 minutes later, I finally heard the clear signal on the scanner and it started moving towards me.  As it got closer, I realized that I had been waiting for one engine. 

[butch]

It was late in the day when I got to Iaeger so I headed home which took me by R. D. Bailey Lake; an interesting area because the grade was realigned when the lake was built which required three new tunnels and abandoned at least two [need to find out the history on this area].  Anyway, there was a coal train heading north and even though it was getting dark, I couldn't resist the urge to play.  I waited for it at Tunnel 3 where you can look through the tunnel the signals on the other end.  A few minutes later the train arrived.

[chipallen16]

Those are pretty epic. I spend a week up in Bluefield each summer, but for mission trips, not railfanning. Granted the trains are a nice benefit, but they're not my purpose. In order to get around that, I'm going on a pretty large eastern railfanning trip, and hopefully I'll be dropped off in Bluefield on the way back home.

-Chip 

[butch]

Thanks for the kind words.

[Expoacher]

  Was an excellent day Butch, even with only one train all day. I'm gonna start concentrating on spending a full day on each branch of the Pokey over the next year, shooting all the tunnels, signals, and anything infrastructure related. Again, was an enjoyable day.