The Lynchburg Crossings

The past few weeks have been a bit boring, we have been doing little tasks getting ready to cut in our two crossings and retrieving our finally fixed truck.  This week we finally got everything lined up and got both crossings cut in, but of course there has to be a little bit of drama.

7th St. Crossing

The first thing you have to do when cutting in a new crossing, is disable the old crossing.  While we get all of the new things in place all trains that come to the crossing must stop and flag the crossing.  This makes everything safe for the public and the trains.  Lynchburg is double track, but we rarely see two trains at the same time at the same crossing.  That is of course, unless I am cutting in a crossing.

Engineer Allen Dial on engine 603 and Engineer Mark Bishop on engine 5304 meet at 7th St. in Lynchburg.  Conductor Jeremy Mooney flags the north side of the crossing.

These two trains met at our crossing just as we were getting started, and there were a few more in line behind them.  The train behind engine 5304 was around 12 thousand feet long (that's over 2 miles long!) so he took a few minutes to get out of the way.  We had trucks backed up for a half a mile trying to get into and out of the steel plant.

It is very hard to work on the tracks with engines in the way, but we successfully got this one done by about 1500.  Of course after we get it turned on, we need to see trains go across it, but as luck would have it, all the trains were in the way when we didn't need them, and none when we needed them. We had to send another crew down to the crossing the next day to watch trains.

Concord Turnpike

Concord turnpike bears no resemblance to an actual turnpike, it is just a little two lane road, right in front of the yard office in Lynchburg.  This little crossing has some traffic, but it wasn't the traffic that made this crossing exciting  In addition to cutting in the crossing and all of the hoopla that goes with that, the power company also decided that they would be turning the power off and replacing the lines that run across the track.  So it was my job to protect train crews, signalmen, the power company and the public.  Honestly I love to be busy, but things like this make me feel like I am running in 4 different directions.  

Appalachian power workers move power lines from the old pole to the new pole

When the power company cut the power off, it also disrupted the dispatchers radio, so we could hear him calling us, but he couldn't hear us answering.  That means phone only communication, which takes much longer than the radio.  Just another little detail to be managed.  So now we have the Q303 and the Q302 trying to switch at the same time, power outages causing problems for the dispatcher's radio and the printers inside the building, everyone has to stop and flag the crossing, we are trying to cut in the crossing and the power company is begging for time to get the new lines up across the tracks.  It was a bit of a crazy day.  

Just to add to the chaos, the city decided it was an excellent day to practice water rescues in the James River, so there was a low flying helicopter dropping and picking things up in the river. It was truly a day of planes, trains and automobiles.  

I am happy to report that all the work was completed correctly and safely, and we all went home with all of our fingers and toes.  Next half we have a few odds and ends to finish up, and then we will be heading to Newport News for our next job.  I wonder what interesting things will happen down there.

For those of you that were interested in the history post, I am working on another history post and hope to have it up next week.  

A helicopter hovers over the river as the power company works on the new lines and we work on the new crossing

For the History Buffs

Like many things in Virginia, the railroad is steeped in history and on a recent hi rail trip I got to see some of those things first hand.  I have been over this territory hundreds of times but usually I don't get to stop, take pictures and really take a good look at what is still left from times past.  This time we were doing a signal survey and we had to stop at each signal location. While the big dogs were doing their part in figuring out how we will bring positive train control to the Rivanna subdivision, I was looking around and taking pictures.

The James River Canal

The James River Canal was an effort by George Washington to better connect the mountains of Virginia to Richmond.  In 1765 George Washington surveyed the area along the James to plan the route the canal would take.  In 1785 the James River Canal company was founded and good old George was named honorary president.  The building of the canal was plagued by tough terrain and even once it was built, flooding was an ongoing problem.  By 1880 railroads were proving themselves as a more reliable form of moving freight and the canal was sold to the Richmond and Alleghany Railroad company.

Today the canal is still there along much of the James and Rivanna subdivisions most of the walls have fallen in but I did find a few spots where the old blocks still stood.  Here are a few pictures from my trip.  

Rock wall along what is left of the canal

You can see that nature has overtaken much of the wall

Thorncliff

When we pulled up to this location we were all in awe of the giant 3 story barn and the old railroad stop that was still standing.  It still had much of the Vermont slate on its roof and there was still the remnants of a fireplace inside.  We had so much fun checking out the history we almost forgot to look at the signal we were supposed to be looking at.  

This one took a little bit more research, as I searched around to get some more history on the place I found a real estate ad from 1914.  It claimed the property had 3, three story barns, room for 50 hands and its own private rail station with 4 trains a day.  This really made me wonder, who in the world was special enough to have their own private rail station?  

After reading through someones typed (like on a typewriter!) dissertation on the history of dairy farming in Virginia I finally found a name.  Joseph Reid Anderson. Mr. Anderson joined the Tredegar Iron works company in 1841 and owned the place by 1848.  He served as Brigadier General in the civil war,  and after he suffered an injury in 1862 he resigned his commission and returned to Tredegar.  He was also very involved in local politics until his death in 1892.  

Okay, so he was a big industrialist and he held minor political positions and served on the losing side of a war as a Brigadier General, how does that qualify him to get his own private rail station?  Easy, Tredegar was the biggest producer of rail and steam locomotives in the south, making Mr. Anderson a pretty popular guy with the railroads. One of the biggest reasons Mr. Anderson was able to produce steel at a lower cost than many others at the time was he was the first person to use slave labor in skilled positions. He did not believe slaves were not smart enough or could not be trusted enough to work in a skilled position.  Below are some of the pictures that I took, if you are interested in seeing a picture of what the Thorncliff rail station looked like in 1900 click here.  

Thorncliff rail station

Fireplace inside the rail station

Three story bank barn Thorncliff Farm