The New River Gorge-huntington To Hinton West Virginia (csx/c&o New River Subdivision)

This scenic stretch of track began as part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in the late 1800s. During this time, it was home to many mining operations with the C&O carrying the newly mined minerals to nearby towns. As the 1940s and 50s rolled around, the New River Gorge became stomping grounds for their famous 2-8-4 Kanahwas and 4-8-4 Greenbriers as they hauled long ore drags along the New River. Eventually it was taken over by CSX in the mid 1980s and continues to operate through the New River Gorge today along with Amtrak. Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s the New River Gorge hosted several famous steam excursions, such as the Chessie Steam Special, pulled by Reading T1 #2101, the Chessie Safety Express pulled by C&O #614, as well has hosting the 1991 NRHS convention with Nickel Plate Road #765 and Pere Marquette #1225 with a series of double headed excursions, and double tracked rub-by's. C&O 614 even pulled several coal drags through the gorge in the mid 1980s while testing for the ACE 3000 project which eventually fell through. But its most famous claim to fame was the New River Trains. The New River Trains were held every fall through the New River Gorge between Huntington and Hinton West Virginia and were pulled by steam locomotives like Milwaukee Road #261, and NKP 765. These trains were so popular that the trains grew up to 30+ passenger cars in length. The New River Train still operates yearly but is now operated under diesel power as CSX issued a system-wide steam ban in the mid 1990s. There are many scenario opportunities for this route and I believe would make a great edition to Train Simulator no matter what era it's set in.

 

I'm surprised this suggestion hasn't gotten more buzz around it, what with the history and legacy of the route and the trains that have ran over it. Granted, someone started on a version of this route and released it in phases, I think, on Railworks America, but it's never been finished and I've heard it never will be. It DOES run all the way from Huntington to Hinton, but scenery's SEVERELY lacking, so a new route built from scratch; preferably in the steam era, but as mentioned in the original post, ANY era would be nice with this route; WOULD be the best bet. At least then there's a chance that we get some proper C&O steam and diesel locos and rolling stock. If possible, perhaps the Loup Creek Branch outta Thurmond could be included with the overall route.

 

Like I said not even a month ago, as of typing this out, I'm legitimately surprised this and a good number of your other suggestions haven't gotten more attention. They're fantastic!!

Edit: Changed "Their fantastic!!" to "They're fantastic!!"

 

I guess not as many people are as enthusiastic about vintage North American stuff as I am. It seems the majority of players are more in favor of European or modern American content. Oh well, it is what it is. As long as there's some kinda vintage route or equipment piece that comes out every once in a while I'll be happy. I'm glad you like my proposals!

 

I remember seeing footage from this area from Greg Scholl's America By Rail Winter Wonderland Video, also included footage from a few excursions in it.

 

That was actually my main inspiration for this proposal! I had just finished re-watching it when I first made this.

 

Now why is there not an option Any Of The Above

I took the Amtrak Cardinal 51 through the New River Gorge several years ago. I loved it ! Breathtaking scenery and beautiful stations. Plenty of tunnels, great hauling in the coal era and interesting passenger service, including flag stops, in the present day. This would be a GREAT route !

The freeware route (never completed and now abandoned) is available at RWA. More info at http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=14

Below some photos I took of the proposed route and the are close to it . . . .

Click the thumbnails below to zoom-in.

 

Below some photos from the interweb . . . click on the thumbnails to zoom-in


.

 

Now why is there not an option Any Of The Above Would love this route in any era

I took the Amtrak Cardinal51 through the New River Gorge several years ago. I loved it ! Breathtaking scenery and beautiful stations. Plenty of tunnels, great hauling in the coal era and interesting passenger service, including flag stops, in the present day. This would be a GREAT route !

In the posts above some interweb shots and some photos I took myself of the proposed route and the area close to it.

 

I agree that any era would be great for this route. Chessie RR diesels, steam locos, or CSX locos would be great. Plus, maybe we could get a few engines that have never been featured in any DTG Train Sim game, such as the C&O Kanahwas and/or Greenbriers.

 

Triggered by the great vintage photo of a couple of diesel engines at Thurmond station (third photo in the first post in this thread) I browsed around for more information on the 1960s / 1970s era. I located some great photos and posted them below.

click the thumbnails to zoom-in . . . .



Source for most photos: https://www.railpictures.net/

 

Why not have some videos of the route?
Ain't none these videos mine by the way.







(cont.)

 

For the curious ones that might not already know, 765 wasn't on the 1989 New River Train because the passenger cars that the FWRHS owned at the time weren't up to CSX's updated standards, so they got two of their executive F units to handle the runs.
Sadly I can't find any footage of the 1990 NRT, but I highly suspect that the New River Train seen in the Hopewell Productions video, Runnin' That New River Train was the 1990 one.





(cont.)

 

^Milwaukee Road 261 cab ride footage on the route filling in for 765, who wouldn't steam again until late 2005 after a total rebuild to blueprint specs, on the 1994 run, which was the last time it was under CSX's insurance, AND steam hauled.

Now we move onto a short documentary type video by High Iron talking about the train, it's decline and cancellation due to Amtrak's new policies in regards to private cars and charters, and it's rebirth under the Rail Excursion Company banner as the Autumn Colors Express West Virginia.


(cont.)

 

This video has a good few bits of footage from New River Trains, but there's footage from other 765 runs in there. You can recognize the NRT runs though, what with the consist length.
And now we move on to more, mostly non-New River Train related operations.





(cont.)

 

Final one, I promise.


And that's enough YouTube searching for videos of the line for me.

 

I spent A LOT of time on having all those videos in one singular post, only to be told to make a post with only five embedded pieces of media, so cutting and pasting were rather useful in this endeavor.

 

Had the last 4 videos running while busy doing other things. Love them, great diesel action, including passengers P42DC. Especially all the bridge are very impressive, including Hawks Nest ! Thanks for sharing !

 

That's a great selection of videos you put! There's one video that I wanted to add on this morning but I couldn't find it. It's a 5 minute clip of C&O 614 rolling through Hawks Nest taken from the Lover's Leap Overlook, with engineer Steve Wickersham putting on a whistle show as the train crosses the river. It might have been deleted, but it's one of my favorite clips from the New River Gorge. The K5LA whistle chime they had on the 614 was absolutely gorgeous.

 

I too tried finding it, for about a minute or two. Tried looking up everything that came to mind, even looked up "C&O 614 Steve Wickersham" to find it, but I still couldn't find it. My guess is that it either got turned into a private video, went unlisted, or was taken down altogether. 'Tis a shame. Some of the best footage of 614 in the New River Gorge available on YouTube for free. I remember some madlad went and uploaded the Greg Scholl Productions video 614 Coal Trains in its entirety and it stayed up for a few days before getting nicked like it rightfully should've been. I'm glad I got to watch it in full while I could though. I certainly recommend buying it whenever ya get the chance, preferably with the rest of Greg Scholl's 614 films, but hey, y'all do y'all in that sense. Anyways, I wish I could have found that footage of 614 at Hawks Nest. It showed how good Steve Wickersham is at pulling a whistle cord/lever, and some good stack talk from 614.

 

Anytime mate.

 

Your proposals have always been top-notch Buynot!. Keep 'em coming. I love vintage American railroading and we can definitely use more routes such as mentioned above.

In fact, I have a suggestion for another route proposal for you: vintage KCS. I have a book about KCS steam locomotives, and dude, they had a roster! Everything from 2-8-8-2 Mallies to former Wabash and Ann Arbor Texas types. They also had some long-legged Pacifics for the name trains like the Southern Belle and the Flying Crow. Highly suggest you look into it!

 

Hear hear, lets keep this thread alive and hope that DTG falls in love with this route too.

For now some historical Thurmond photos (click the thumbnail to get a closer look)





Allthough I am a diesel fan, the above scenes look might nice too !

Source for most photos: https://www.nps.gov/

 

Oh you just absolutely made my day with all these photographs of Thurmond in its heyday.

 

Let's have some more photographs.
Let it be known that these ain't mine.





Heh. CSX 765.

You've gotta be stark raving mad to jump off of that bridge.

 

Video unavailable
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Richard Melvin, LLC, dba Hopewell Productions.

And suddenly, I figured out what happened to that video of Steve Wickersham laying on 614's whistle at Hawks Nest. Ah well. He was completely in his legal rights to do that. Still a shame though.

 

Steam & Diesel . . . . .



Before the Chesapeake & Ohio and Baltimore & Ohio merged the two interchanged at Kenova, West Virginia near Huntington where the former's main line met the latter's Ohio River Branch. Here, B&O steamers can be seen to the left while C&O GP9's hustle a coal drag in a scene that probably dates to the 1950s.

Source - https://www.american-rails.com/cory.html

 

If Kenova's in the route, we'd have the possibility of some N&W action, due to their mainline going through there as well. Nice.

 

Let's have another video, but this time, it be a video of walking around in Hinton, ending at the station.



I know Hinton in the actual route, if it gets made, wouldn't be so highly detailed, but this video could quite possibly be used as some sorta guide to making Hinton in the route seem like Hinton in real life.

 

Agreed!

 

Alderson Train Depot , one station from Hinton, a real beauty !!!

Click on the thumbnails to zoom in . .





https://www.facebook.com/Alderson-Train-Depot-1525403164234865/
and
https://www.railpictures.net/

 

Let's have some more film. Surprisingly high quality film too. I'm guessing someone managed to get a hold of the original master film and then digitized it. Good on 'em for that. I'm thinking the sound could quite possibly be live sound as well, due to that probably being far easier to achieve in the early 80's then what it was prior.



If some of the footage seems kinda familiar to ya, this video here might help ya out:



1) God rest Tom Stephens' soul, he's certainly missed. 2) I just can't get enough of that GG1 bell Tom had on 765.

 

Oh my goodness, I forgot to put this video of the 1994 New River Train in, my apologies.

 

Let's have some more videos. Of note in that first video is how it starts with a photo run-by at Sewell.



Now we have a video of the 2018 New River Train, which was also the final NRT that the Collis P. Huntington Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society handled before the whole cancellation and rebirth thing happened.



And now we have a video of the reborn NRT under the banner of the Rail Excursion Company, as the 2019 Autumn Colors Express West Virginia.



Here's to hoping the NRT/ACEWV will regain it's stature as the longest annual rail excursion in America with 30 car, or at least near 30 car, trains making a return.

 

Here's a trailer for a full length video that covered both the 1993 and 1994 New River Trains with the (2)765 and 261 at the head ends of their respective trains.



And here we see a music video of various scenes of New River Trains, ACE coal Trains, the 91 NRHS Convention, and 614's NJT runs set to a rendition of Little Drummer Boy.



And here we see scenes of 261 in its Lackawanna 1661 garb on what I'm presuming were ferry moves, then scenes from '94 of the old girl in her original scheme on that year's NRT. Of note in this video is the usage of 261's original raspy 3 chime whistle and the FWRHS's tool car being present on the 1994 NRT, due to an agreement having been made for the FWRHS's crew to handle the operation of the loco due to them being very familiar with that route for obvious reasons.



And now we take a look at scenes from 1992 that feature old semaphore signals on a former B&O line and then that year's NRT.



And here we see a cab ride in the 765 from either 1992 or 1993, and I say 1993 despite this next video's title due to the five chime heard on 765's second whistle valve, and the fact that 765 only had a C&O 3 chime, and a Wabash 6 chime as guest whistles on the 1992 NRT to my knowledge, but her having a very similar sounding five chime guest whistle back in 1993 when she was done up as her long scrapped Kanawha cousin C&O 2765, which if it is a '93 run, then the video's title is wrong, even in claiming to be a New River run, because the (2)765 had her cousin 2700's whistle on her second whistle valve for that year's NRT runs.



(continued)

 

And now we have some VERY high quality audio recordings of 765 on various NRT's along with pictures of 765 on the line.



And here we have scenes of the ferry moves leading up to and during the 1991 NRHS Convention. The actual videos start at around a minute in for the first one and 70 seconds in for the second one.






For those who might not know, the guest whistle heard on the 765 in these videos was off of a C&O Hudson.

Side note: This bloody limit of 5 embedded videos to a post keeps getting me.

(contiuned)

 

Edit: It would appear the channel associated with three of the videos in this post got sacked for posting footage that wasn't their own.

Now then, picking up right where I left off:





And last but not least, we have 765, the month after the 1991 Convention, on an excursion between St. Albans, West Virginia and Cincinnati, Ohio for a REDS baseball game.



Quick note, in that third video, I've no idea why a short bell 3 chime is heard over footage of 765's drivers. My thoughts on it is that the company that made the initial video took audio from another one of 765's trips and put it over that footage of her drivers due to the camera used for those shots of her drivers not having a microphone, or maybe it wasn't even footage from the 91 Convention. I dunno. Whatever the case, it's there, so we gotta deal with it.

 

Something of note in the first video of the post above this one is the Pentrex cameraman leaning outta 765's cab when the doubleheader was heading outta Russell, Kentucky.
Anyways, lets have some more videos.




And how neglectful to not have footage of an ACTUAL C&O Kanawha in operation. Note how the Pennsy 3 chime on her then new second whistle valve was the whistle being blown the majority of the time, with her original C&O hooter being blown twice in the video. I've heard that those old Kanawha hooters were VERY loud, even in cab, so I'm willing to bet that's why you scarcely hear her hooter whistle in this next video.



Really looking forward to 2716 coming back to life in the future, big shout to Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation for having a realistic plan to do that, as well as a realistic plan to inject some new life into the Estill County area with their Heritage Center. One can certainly not forget KSHCO's vital roll in keeping Nickel Plate 587 alive as well. Oh, and the fact that R.J. Corman donated their Chinese QJ 2-10-2 to them. So, on that note, lets have some footage of 2716's latest movements from 2019.



(continued)

 

To find more coverage of 800's and 2716's 2019 adventures, just go to YouTube and put Heritage Highball in the search bar.

 

To put into perspective what 2716'll sound like once running, let's have some video of sister engine 2789's whistle on good ol' 765.




And speaking of 2716's welded boiler equipped sister, 2789 had a bit of a small adventure this year.



Anyways, lets have a clip of a certain C&O J3a at Barboursville.



And on that note, I end this round of posting on this thread.

 

Alright. It's 2:29 AM Eastern at the time of starting up with this one, and I'm bored, so let's have at it.

 

Those "Golden Cows", as the M-1's were called, were some good looking machines, even if they did flop. And for me, no discussion of the C&O's turbines isn't complete without making mention of their Baker valve gear and Franklin Type B poppet valve gear equipped companions that were as trouble free as the turbines were troublesome, the L2 and L2a 4-6-4's.

L2a 310:

L2 305:

L2a 312:


'Tis a shame there weren't any L2a's preserved. They would've made some fantastic mainline excursion engines.

Edit: Added the slideshow of M-1 pictures.
Edit 2: Added some stuff.

 

Let's have some more action outta the New River Gorge.




In an earlier post, I mentioned possibly including the Loup/Loop Creek Branch in the route, so lets have some video of that.





Immediate edit: I acknowledge that to have R.J. Corman painted locos on the branchline, DTG would need to get a license to use their logo, so there isn't some immediate need for R.J. Corman stock on the line. Besides, gotta save something for the reskinners right?

 

All those different private cars are very impressive, and love the P42DC Genesis engine !

 

An old track overview I stumbled upon on the interweb . . . .


Original without the yellow circle . . . https://i.postimg.cc/kgJf4Dxq/tgrfdsxaz.jpg



Any idea why the Dunloup branch ist not listed ? Or is this map pre-Loup ?

 

Your guess is as good as mine.

 

Well then. Seems the Brits took a slight interest in the 1986 New River Train and a subsequent run to Cincinnati.




Edit: Well it appears the channel the videos were uploaded to has been deleted. Well darn. That appears to be a theme with a bunch of the video I've posted on this thread.

 

I personally would prefer diesel for this route as a good steam locomotive is very difficult to execute, but I'd love a place to run my RWA Kawanha, especially with the Trurail texture overhaul.