Eastern Railroad Discussion > NC-VA in eastern NC..a few more from 2011

These are a few shots of the North Carolina-Virginia RR operating over former Atlantic Coast Line track just east of Kelford, NC at the X of Pruden Road and 72 Siding Road. My photography skills are not on a par with many of the TO posters, but I do enjoy observing this railroad, and I hope you all can appreciate my efforts.

The NC-VA took over this line in 1987, and traffic was greatly increased later when the NUCOR steel mill began operations at its current Hertford County site on the Chowan River near Tunis. Tunis was the site of the old ACL Chowan River bridge (now gone), but a new line was extended to the steel mill site; the mill has a switching yard and some locomotives of its own. Inbound trains bring scrap metal in gons, and return empty flats; outgoing trains carry heavy steel plate and empty gons to the interchange with CSX at Boykins, VA. The railroad also handles some chemicals, feed materials for Perdue poultry, and misc. materials for the Kerr plant in Ahoskie. The RR office is in Ahoskie, NC, at the former SCL office. The outbound is usually a morning train, with return in late afternoon, early evening. There are some photos of this line on various other photographer pages, with descriptions of power, but the current power is mostly GP-38, GP-40, and the roadmates, as seen here. A good bit of work was done in recent years to upgrade this line, and that seems to have reduced some of the derailment problems that the early years saw. Several crossings have also recently received warning gates and lights.

The train pictured here has just made the turn at Kelford, from former Seaboard Air Line track onto the remnant of the former ACL Rocky Mount-Pinners Point line; that ACL line crossed the Roanoke River and the Chowan River, enroute to Portsmouth, VA. All track west of Kelford over the Roanoke was abandoned by the seventies, and tracks later removed; the NC-VA did use about a mile of that track for storage for a while, but it is now gone, as is switching track at Kelford. There used to be a 90-degree at Kelford, with a farm gate; the SAL crew had to stop and unlock it to pass over enroute to Lewiston-Woodville, NC to serve a Union Camp pulpwood yard, farm equipment manufacturer (Harrington, "The Roanoke Line"}, a cotton gin, and a lumber mill. Only the Woodville cotton gin survives today, and that five mile line from the ACL crossing at Kelford to Lewiston was abandoned and ripped up in the last days of SCL (as I recall). In the later years of SCL, the 90 degree was replaced by a wye, and now a curve onto the former SAL line.

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NC-VA inbound train, with 3813 leading is seen here on March 21, 2011, near the Kelford, NC city limits, headed for Aulander and Ahoskie.

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Typical steel plate load on the NC-VA, although this car is headed back to the mill. See this on occasion, but I don't know why. Not a great pic, I know.

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Good photos , your photography skils are as good as anyones on here, I like.
How long has NC-VA had those colors, scarlett and gray, just curious.

alan

Nice series Dave. Thanks for sharing.
John

Alan, thanks for the comment on my posting. I can't really answer the question on the NC-VA colors. I think those colors may have been a RailAmerica scheme that eventually made it onto equipment for the NC-VA, but I don't recall and early NC-VA locomotives in that scheme. They did have one in purple and silver back in the early nineties or so. Jason Underwood photographed it and those photos are on the net somewhere.