Friday, November 4, 2022

Peach Creek, WV: C&O Railyard, Roundhouse and Coal Tower

Railyard: (Satellite)
Roundhouse: (Satellite, it still has a turntable)

Ron Flanary posted
Two B&O GP30s have fallen from grace as mainline power and now take a breather from mine run duties at the former C&O's Peach Creek engine terminal in Logan County, West Virginia. This was where the last gasp of C&O steam in regular service took place, in 1956. The date for this Kodachrome exposure was September 24, 1986.
Randall Hampton shared

Dennis DeBruler commented on Randall's share
Fortunately, the unique shadow of the coaling tower makes it easy to spot in this 1957 aerial photo. I included part of the railyard to show how many coal cars were in storage. I see in a satellite image that the turntable still exists.
EarthExplorer: Apr 15, 1957 @ 31,000, AR1VQI000020087

This excerpt is tall because I wanted to show how C&O had to stretch out the railyard to squeeze more tracks in between the river and the mountain. Since I had the room, I also included the branch to the east along Peach Creek because it shows a conveyor served a couple of mines.
1963 Henlawson and Logan Quads @ 24,000

Speaking of tall excerpts, I grabbed this one to show that the branch that served Peach Creek left the C&O mainline way up north at Barboersville, WV. But the main reason for this excerpt is to show that there were a bunch of "tendrils" south of Peach Creek serving various coal mines. (Look for the "crossed picks" tipple icon.) According to my 1928 RR Atlas, the tendrils went as far south as Gilbert and as far east as Three Forks. Note that the C&O had another branch that went south of the mainline from St. Albans to serve coal mines on the east side of a mountain ridge. (Save the image to disk and use a photo viewing app to zoom and pan.) According to my 2004 SPV Map, quite a few of those tenrils south of Peach Creek were still owned by CSX.
1957 Charleston, Jenkins, Bluefield and Huntington Quads @ 250,000



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