We finished up at the Good Zoo in Oglebay Park in Wheeling around noon, and then we drove back south on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River. With some time to kill after picking up our yellow lab Molly, we crossed the river at Moundsville over to Ohio and drove south on Highway 7 to Powhatan Point. In 1952 the Pennsylvania Railroad built a standard guage branch westward up the Captina Creek valley from here that replaced a narrow guage railroad over much of the right-of-way.
Today the NS operates south out of Mingo Junction to Powhatan Point where a power plant and a train-to-barge facility exist, and the branch runs approximately 12 miles inland to a mine load out. Two or three shuttle trains consisting of around 60 cars with a single locomotive on each end traverse the branch each day from the mine to supply the power plant and barge facility with coal. We could see one train out of reach at the plant, so we started up the paved narrow road towards the mines, dodging fast-moving coal trucks along the way. The radio indicated some activity was ahead, and soon we spotted the east end of a westbound empty move heading back to the mine with an ex-Conrail SD40-2 bringing up the rear.
A few curves on ahead we stopped to shoot the lead unit, a NS SD40-2 in black.
The train was keeping to less than 20mph at all times, so we had no problems keeping ahead of it to the next good spot at this open field for two views.
Now in one of the best scenes of the day, the line crossed over Captina Creek on an open-deck bridge underlined with yellow flowers.
The next grade crossing yielded a head-on view including a large pile of recently replaced ties.
Tomorrow we’ll finish up this chase in Armstrong Mills.
