Train carrying members of Congress hits a truck

[mahatmakanejeeves]

39. Yeah, really.

This happened on one of my favorite lines for chasing trains. I've lost count of the number of miles I put on my cars pursuing and photographing trains on their way west out of Charlottesville. I've got a four-channel crystal scanner with the right frequency in it - 160.23 MHz - ready to go.

I should note that the line is now technically run by the Buckingham Branch Railroad. When I lived in the outskirts of Crozet and in Charlottesville, the line was the Mountain Subdivision of the Clifton Forge Division of the C&O.

Charlottesville is 600 feet above sea level. The line has to go up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains, at Blue Ridge Tunnel just west of Afton, to get into the Shenandoah Valley. The first city the line goes through in the Shenandoah Valley is Waynesboro, which is 1,305 feet above sea level.



Blue Ridge Tunnel, east portal, old and new

Freight trains headed west from Charlottesville can keep up a pretty good pace until they hit Crozet. That's when the climbing begins.

CSX Piedmont, Washington, North Mountain subdivisions

In December 2004, Buckingham Branch entered into a 20-year lease with CSX Transportation to operate 200 miles (322 km) of track in Virginia on the latter's Piedmont, Washington, North Mountain subdivisions. Each were originally parts of the Virginia Central Railroad's line, and extend from Richmond through Doswell, Orange to Charlottesville, Virginia. From there, the line extends through the Blue Ridge Tunnel complex to Waynesboro, and Staunton to reconnect with CSX lines at Clifton Forge. The line which was the backbone of Collis Huntington's newly completed Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in the 1870s was supplanted by a lower-grade line along the path of the former James River and Kanawha Canal in the 1880s.

Unlike the original branch in Buckingham County, the new section is leased for a 20-year period. CSX retains overhead trackage rights on the trackage leased to the Buckingham Branch, and continues its same pattern of running empty westbound coal and grain trains over the route, sometimes as many as 8 a day. Buckingham Branch train crews must contend with this fact by continually dodging the CSX westbounds, as well as the Amtrak trains, by going into the various sidings along the lines. Amtrak's Cardinal continues to use the Buckingham Branch line between Orange and Clifton Forge on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, the only instance where an Amtrak train utilizes a Class III railway line.

This new section of the expanded Buckingham Branch was dispatched by CSX from Jacksonville, Florida for the first two years; now it is dispatched by the BB out of Staunton.