Saturday, 9 March 2013, Bristol to Radford, VA
“I called for tickets the same day I heard about the trips on a local radio station in Knoxville, TN. As part of their 21st Century Steam program, Norfolk Southern had teamed with the Tennessee Valley RR Museum in Chattanooga and Johnson City’s Watauga NHRS chapter to run refurbished Southern Ry consolidation 630 on steam excursions from Bristol, VA up to Radford, VA and back on Saturday, March 9, 2013. Next day the same consist would steam from Bristol to Bulls Gap, TN and return, all mileage on the NS main line from Shaffer’s Crossing in Roanoke, VA to Sevier Yard in Knoxville, TN. Tickets were very reasonable, $65/person for each trip, including tax, all coach seating.
I asked a friend & classmate to teach our Sunday School class on Sunday the 10th. My wife didn’t want to go, so I got a room at the Budget Host Inn on State Street in Bristol for Saturday night for $45 (however for a minimum 3-night stay the next weekend, $600 – for the Bristol NASCAR race). I found the motel online, looking for the closest to the station. It was accurately reviewed as quite pleasant, clean and convenient, just over a mile from the recently and beautifully renovated Bristol VA/TN RR station. The station is now an artsy mall but unfortunately was closed before our departures and after arrivals and couldn’t be internally explored.
Tickets for each run arrived separately in the mail from the TVRM Chattanooga office and I was assigned to car 6, a Watauga restored ex-N&W Powatan Arrow coach for the Radford leg, and to car 1, TVRM’s ex Southern Ry coach 907 to Bull’s Gap.
The radio alarm went off at 3:30 am, Saturday morning and I was showered, dressed in Little River RR Museum finery, on the road by 4:30 for the 2.5-hour drive to Bristol, fully provisioned w/ Rush Limbaugh diet tea, water, cola, snacks, and ham and cheese sandwiches for the trips. Our consist held a commissary car but lacked a diner. Since there was no traffic on I-40 or 81, I arrived at the motel about 6:40 just as the proprietor was changing the sign in the lobby from “Closed” to “Open,” so I went in. They weren’t crowded, so I got the room early and a cup of coffee, then unpacked clothes, selected victuals for the Radford leg and put the rest in the room refrigerator, loaded the camera and set out for the station by 7 am. The cool weather could not have been nicer, but the walk down State St (on the VA side) was a mile due east, and the sun was blinding.
Parking lots at and around the station were full and I assumed the train was sold out. There were about 600 on each trip, including 100 crew mostly from Watauga, some TVRM (including the 630 cab crew), many actual NS employees, and NS security who chased the train to all stops. Behind 630 our consist was an NS slug, GP 40 assist loco, tool/parts car, 11 coaches and the commissary car, a redone 40 ft mail car (not an RPO). Passengers were milling about the station concourse and appeared to range in age from <1 to over 80. I spoke with one man who had spent nearly $1,000 to bring 13 family members on this excursion, none of whom he said had ever seen much less ridden a passenger train before.
Our train was steaming on the ready track a quarter mile north of the station in what’s left of the once sizable Bristol yard. At 7:40 am, she gave three brief low-throat toots and slowly backed south past the station across State St and into TN to switch onto the main. I (and ~50 others) was waiting with a Pentax SLR and two rolls of 200 speed 35mm film. Got several shots as 630 eased back into VA to a stop heading north and we began to board. Except for car assignment, seating was unassigned, first come, first choice. I got a seat at the back of car 6, nee N&W coach 829, on the left (west) side in front of a full window, maximum viewing. About 8:15, two toots and we imperceptibly slowly and gently started rolling toward Radford about 115 miles up the track; so gently that we were several hundred yards out of the station when I heard from several nearby seats, “Hey, we’re moving.”
We had just cleared the station when I also heard commotion from the front of our car, “the water’s everywhere.” An unknown traveler had flushed the toilet, the fill valve stuck open and the gratefully empty bowl had overflowed flooding the bathroom and front half of the car. Only one mop on board but it was eventually located and water cleaned up in about 30 min. Only then could we go forward to the commissary/souvenir car where I left about $40 in exchange for some neat TVRM stuff, of course including the 630 T-shirt. The 5-foot tall cashier asked me to pull some hats from an overhead bin that she could not reach (and I barely could) and put them out on the shelves for which she offered and I accepted a 630 3-D refrigerator magnet.
Railfans were waiting with cameras at literally every grade crossing and overpass between Bristol and Abingdon, VA where we stopped to pick up more passengers. Still our car did not fill to capacity, and I spread out on my double seat for both trips. Very helpful route guides were passed out early and were ideal for familiarizing oneself with where we were and the points of interest we were passing on the way to Radford. I had forgotten how blissfully bucolic Emory is. Their little station is still standing but could use a dose of TLC.
Our engineer was making up time, and we hit speeds of 45-50 mph and held them on the occasional tangents. We actually arrived in Radford 5 minutes early, but not before passing 100 miles of beautiful SW VA countryside, including the Glade Spring’s Y and spur to Saltville; Chilhowee, where it seemed the whole town had turned out to watch and hear us pass; Seven Mile Ford and Marion with the beautifully restored and often photographed Main St (US 11) depot and last crossing of the Holston River; and Rural Retreat, site of one of Southern’s most disastrous high speed wrecks. We crossed the well-photographed high trestle coming into Wytheville, and later whistle-saluted many more than the whole population of Max Meadows where Winston Link shot one of his famous photos through a too-long-gone trackside parlor window.
After the short and only tunnel on the route we steamed through Pulaski and hundreds more envious fans, and held the main line to Dublin (instead of bending SE on the also scenic Galax branch). After several minutes descending the long grade down to the New River we slowed to cross the New River bridge into Radford. Along the way a couple of ladies came through the train handing out maps and info packets about Radford and explaining which busses to take to get to restaurants, museums and other attractions in town. They were really helpful, and since I’d already polished off a ham and cheese sandwich, when I detrained I caught the blue line to the Glencoe museum, where the ladies had promised they had a RR exhibit. The museum, a Civil War General’s mansion, also had a gift shop and I could not resist the two N&W books, a Pulaski Station history book and post cards they offered, even though they only took cash. I walked back to the train and looked into a couple of antique shops, bought a Grif Teller cover RR comic book and took some more photos before retraining about 2:20 pm for a 2:30 on time departure. Radford has a “Y:” and NS turned the whole train, so we all kept our original seats and what we missed on the right side of train coming north, we saw on the way back south to Bristol.
The return was pleasant and relaxing, except that our car lacked AC and many opted for cooler cars. We had brief holds at Marion for opposing freights to get in the hole but with those exceptions NS kept us priority the whole day. A lady representing the “Fire up 611″ committee showed two DVDs promoting restoration to service of N&W’s big streamlined J-Class 4-8-4 locomotive, now resting peacefully, but cold, in Roanoke’s Virginia Transportation Museum. We reached Bristol at sundown. The walk back to the motel was markedly slower, not just because I carried four bags of souvenirs, camera and remaining food. We’d covered about 230 miles, and I’d walked about 4-5 more. Take out supper from Hardee’s was definitely the low-light of the day. I set the clock ahead an hour, watched “cousin” Ric Harrison on TV, and slept until the 6 am alarm.”
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