Doswell, VA: HN Tower: CSX/RF&P vs CSX/C&O

(Satellite)

Street View, Oct 2012

I got the 1928 railroad names of C&O and RF&P from this map.

1951 Ashland Quad @ 24,000

The USGS map labels both routes as CSX. But Google Maps labels a building as Buckingham Branch Railroad. That railroad now operates the former C&O route.

This post helps motivate me to keep checking out posts about junction towers because this one is still standing.

Stanley Short posted
It is Friday July 9, 1982 and it looks like the crew on the Chesapeake & Ohio Richmond Turnaround Local might be in for an early quit as they head back east, leaving Doswell, VA with GP39 No. 3909.

Stone Sitzman commented on Stanely's post
Very different scene today
Craig Cloud: Tower in 1982 was closed then, since been preserved?
Stanley Short: Craig Cloud The tower was closed in 1958 when CTC was installed and control was turned over to the train dispatcher in Richmond. It, with a number of other RF&P towers, were kept to house the electronic equipment. CSX has moved that to modern signal cases and now it sets empty, waiting to be torn down.

SRF, Sep 2021

On the day I wrote these notes, this Dec 26 post appeared on my feed. The tower is peaking over the second locomotive.

Stanley Short posted
A westbound CSX empty grain train on the Buckingham Branch RR crosses over CSX's RF&P Subdivision at Doswell, VA on Dec. 17, 2022, led by SD40-3 No. 4015. Photo by Stan Short.
Randall Hampton shared

Harrison Mitchell posted
CSX 288W (E226-21) crosses the RF&P at HN Tower on the BBRR Piedmont Subdivision. Taken at Doswell Virginia.
Kirk Ian Munro: The BB has made huge improvements on the former CSX Piedmont, Washington and North Mountain Subdivisions. Many of trains when CSX was maintaining those subdivisions would go on the law as a result of all the slow orders.

BB has one of their twelve transload facilities and one of the four interchanges with CSX at this location. They obviously have at least two locomotives.

Street View, Oct 2012