CSX Across the Blue Ridge Mountains & The Engineering Marvel that Made it Happen
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 พ.ย. 2024
- CSX is the present day Class I that operates over the former Clinchfield Railroad, a strategic north-south rail line over 4 mountain ranges linking the heart of Appalachia in Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, to population centers in the Carolinas. It is both the most recently built mainline of this scale in the eastern US and most efficient crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, made possible by the "Clinchfield Loops", an engineering marvel that zig-zags up the mountainside maintaining grades well less than the Southern's famous Old Fort loops and Saluda Grade which both cross the same mountains to the south.
Though traffic on this line was sparse during our visits in late 2019 and early 2020, we chased trains through the tunnels and over bridges across the scenic, remote mountain region.
Copyright Central Penn Rail Productions - 2023
super train video bro
Decided to revisit this video today because I’m sure most of this line is in some form of ruin because of the historic floods in Tennessee and North Carolina. Praying for all those affected.
Agreed - looks great!!
Great narration and crisp, clear shots.
Great video 👍👍
great video!!!
Fantastic video, as always. You did the Clinchfield justice!
Thanks man, and yeah as much justice as I could for the time allotted!
I did enjoy your railfanning adventure. You really do all lot of research for your videos. We sure do appreciate your narrative.
Interesting Video, thanks.
Thanks!!!
Wonderful video!
Stunning scenery, beautifully filmed featuring long heavy freight trains battling Blue Ridge mountain grades with their incessant curves and multiple tunnels. Magnificent. Thanks so much for sharing.
Enjoyed your video, very much, along with your comments, and I subscribed.
Thanks! And thanks for subscribing!
Awesome videography. I do still life but can appreciate this ;-)
I live close to spruce pine so I railfan the loops most days I’m off from work
That's cool! Very lucky to be so close by, I'd love to get more tunnels and trains there.
Excellent video. Great photography and narrative.
Fantastic footage
The scenery look so photographic along the line. Great video
Well Done! you will make Danny proud.
Great videos i railfan on the sub mountain division off the 17 mile grade. And chase the coal trains from Keyser West Virginia to Mt Storm Power Plant
That's a cool area, I have some video of a train to Mt Storm in 2021 that I happened upon on my way to Charleston that I have to edit and upload sometime.
Very beautiful place love the train horn sound good 💗❤️😍😘💕🚂🚆📯🥳💖😚 love the train 🚂🚂🚂🚂🚂💞😙💜 love the mountain view
Groovy! I loved the small town atmosphere, bridges and mountains. Seems like a neat place for a vacation, homestyle meal and watch trains.
And fishing and rafting and kayaking too! Little Switzerland is a neat place too just outside of Spruce Pine, look it up if you have the time. Thanks for watching!
Fantastic catches, spectacular scenery and overall great video!
Thanks!!!
Local knowledge is proved to be an asset in great footage. Thanks for including maps of the area.
Watching in New Zealand
Greetings and thank you! Glad you found the maps helpful as I enjoy making them.
You sir provide us with awesome video’s please keep up the great content
Will do, thanks again for watching & commenting!
What an incredible railroad. Sometimes you have to give up quantity over quality. Superb production as usual.
I agree with that statement; I am not a hotspot railfan - I prefer to go drive to the trains rather than let them come to me. Living next to a busy mainline that once saw 50 trains per day, I've had my fill of the rush of a busy railroad. There's a lot of luck, research and chances of failure even seeing trains on low traffic lines but that's what makes it so rewarding when you actually do see something!
I like the area you railfan and I've made many trips to Vermont over the past couple years that are still projects in progress. The biggest goal for me is to get the Newport Sub crossed off once and for all!
Thanks for watching & commenting.
@@CentralPennRailProductions Thanks for the reply, the Newport Line is currently local traffic only and the WACR crew goes north one day and south the next, five days a week.
@@NorthCountryTrains I've gotten the WACR a few times but trying to get CP can be very unpredictable. I've only got them at Richford so far but not the rest of the line into Newport.
@@CentralPennRailProductions I don’t believe they currently go past Richford. If they do it’s only once and a while.
@@NorthCountryTrains They do! It's been about once a week lately. Do you know Chuck K? He frequently posts shots of them.
Great photography and production value, a complete railroad video with excellent narration and graphics.
Thanks again! Hope you've been well
Great videos and thank you for providing the closed captions.
Very well documented! Makes me want to visit. Can only imagine what fall-time or a sunny day would look like there.
It's great in the fall though I haven't seen the peak foliage there for myself. Maybe someday. Thanks for watching & commenting!
Wonderful video. Many thanks for posting.
And thank you for watching!!!
Fantastic video and footage!
Thank you!
What a great railroad and great video! I couldn't enjoy more!
Thanks!!!
This was fantastic, thanks for the time and work you put into this..
No problem, glad you enjoyed!!!
Absolutely love those old signals. Great video as always.
Yeah they're neat. And thanks!!!
This is great!
Thanks!!!
nice video & nice catches
Thanks!
Very nice video.
Thank you!!!
One of your best yet.
Thanks!!!
Great catches there man, this looked like a great place to take photos!
Oh yeah, there's endless places to take cool photos and videos, this maybe touched on not even 10% of the spots in this area. Just need more trains lol. Thanks for watching!
fantastic video
Well shot, Eric. The Clinchfield has intrigued me, but the low volume of traffic has deterred me from visiting. Perhaps I need to give it a shot.
It's not too bad now with all the unit traffic.
We do get a bit of traffic on the ol' Clinchfield atm.
The clinchfield loops continue to baffle me in their engineering. I am hoping that one day soon I can spend a day on the Blue Ridge sub myself
Awesome video! If you get the chance to railfan csx, i definently recommend railfanning the CSX old main line sub from relay MD to Point of rocks. Its a single track line with a few sidings and sees about 4-6 trains a day. A few really good spots are watersville road, morgan road, the signals at sykesville, and woodstock
Thanks! The OML is on my list but it might be awhile until I build up coverage of it. On the other hand, I've been doing a lot of the Hagerstown and Hanover operations in my spare time.
@@CentralPennRailProductions awesome!
Nice delay in block impression !
Can confirm that the suspension bridge at 3:46 has been completely destroyed by the Helene floods. This line, near Poplar especially, has completely vanished in some spots and has become part of the nearby rivers.
Killer shots! I like them old US&S R2's signals!
Oops my bad, I thought they used P5s down here and R2s further up on the Big Sandy. I'm not a signal expert but they are very similar.
Excellent video with very informative and easy to follow narration. This is such a beautiful part of the country and your photography did it the justice it is due. The Clinchfield has long been one of my favorite railroad segments, although I have never had the opportunity to railfan anything south of Erwin. This video makes me want to visit the BR Sub even more! Thank you for posting!
Thanks for the comment, glad you followed along and found all the information useful. I'm hoping to get above Erwin next time, whenever that will be!
the best
Now, we have Q653!
Nice video. The narration and video quality is excellent.
The first clip at the siding makes me wish I could've seen the Clinchfield when it was a lot busier.
Is there any talk of increasing traffic in the north end?
You guys have any dwarves living up there? According to movie they made a home in the Blue Mountains.
This Was a Great video! I was wondering does this CCF Line run to Russell KY through the Southern Coalfields in Ky ?
Nice! Not many people have the luxury of capturing Rocky in good light... Or capturing Rocky at all lol. Awesome documentary on my favorite piece of rail!
Ahh, my home rails! Grew up alongside the Clinchfield in Johnson City
I wish we could get Amtrak between Columbus and Spartanburg via the Clinchfield
Yeah how cool would that be! I think in the long term it's being considered for a Charlotte - Cincinnati route but I don't know what will come of it.
@Central Penn Rail Productions That would be great. Tennessee needs to work with Amtrak to bring back the Tennesseean when they bring Amtrak to Bristol!
love your video spent time back in the day on Clinchfield with pictures Copper Creek Trestle. Can you pinpoint the location and directions to the shot with the 3 tunnels (Speedy, Pine and Bird). Would love to get a shot of that location.
If you park at the Peppers Creek Road crossing on it would be directly south of their around the first big curve in the tracks.
thank you
Some forget the Steepest grade in the U.S of class one railroading the Saluda N.C. Grade 4.5% grade operated by Southern/CSX which is now abandoned since 1992. on that note excellent production...
While Saluda may have the steepest ruling grade, Murphy Branch (which is still in use by Blue Ridge Southern and the Great Smoky Mountains) railroad actually has much longer sections of 4% grades, and there's a short section of 50 feet or so that's almost 7%. So much so that Southern listed the tonnage rating that could be handled by a single GP50 locomotive on Red Marble mountain as 15 tons less than Saluda, meaning it was a much harder mountain for trains. In either case, both lines scaled parts of the Blue Ridges, which North Carolina proves to have the must rugged and unforgivable terrain for railroads in the east, followed by West Virginia.
@Central Penn Rail Productions Absolutely 💯 with today's cutting-edge locomotive technology should be a much easier but still presents a challenge regardless that the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains , Tennessee, and West Virginia are unforgiving beasts of natural and engineering marvels.
My special needs son really likes the Clinchfield Railroad he says it is very scenic and thinks the departments of transportation should run passenger trains on it because it is just so scenic and thinks people would flock to ride trains through there.
I say the clinchfield in the Blue Ridge is one of the greatest spot to catch on CSX.
Yes it is, very nice area, even without the trains, taking a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway is always a treat! Thanks for watching!
I live next to Eastman Chemical's Texas plant, it's not as big as their Kingsport facility, but it's still very big...
I'm not sure exactly when the last boilers were cut over to Natural Gas but it was around 2019-2020 and since then all coal Eastman receives is used for plastic feedstock not power generation. They use the carbon in the coal for plastic instead of petroleum for almost all of the products they make there. Great video!
The Beautiful sounds that come from EMD locomotives, are exactly how diesel/electric locomotives are supposed to sound!! Nothing any better than maybe a early Alco, or early 4 axle GE's!!!! Lol...
Anybody else notice that that signal changed from dark to red as the train passed? Seems the opposite reaction one would expect as the train was crossing opposite the signals face direction.
Do you know what section of the railroad track got damage from th recent flooding from the river?
😊
The future looked bright.... then came Helene.
Very Cool!! I love those CSX Coal train!! Also, Since your an expert on the Port Road, do the trains have different schedules or departure times on weekends or weekdays? I tried one Sunday to get some stuff at COLA tower (Milepost 38.4 if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I am) at around 3 ish with my whole family, in hopes of showing them a real coal train. Unfortunately, while I got word of 2 eastbound coal trains (650 and 590) that passed the horseshoe curve at around 11:30-noon ish, Nothing came, and I left after about 45 minutes, in defeat, as I'd promise my brother he'd get to see a real NS coal train, a break from the intermodal and trash traffic were used to seeing in Jersey. Most of my trips before that ended similarly with maybe a close call with Y91 on a rare ocassion. In that case, I saw the end of Y91 sitting not too far from where I was, but he left after dispatcher gave him permmission to procede onto the Roy.
Yeah they don't usually go on duty until 5-6pm and leave shortly after so they hit the NEC in the evening / night after the commuter rush is over. Getting afternoon trains is not very common, maybe happens 3 or 4 times per week on a good week.
@@CentralPennRailProductions O, ok. I see. Makes sence, since Amtrak's commuter rush is going strong at that time. But on Wedensday, I hear some action on the radio at about 3:30 PM.
*Compensated* grade. What is that?
That factors in the added drag from curves, which is about 0.04% per degree. So a 10 degree curve could add .4% to a grade, but there's many ways it can be calculated. Several reverse curves or S-curves add a lot more where as horseshoe curves, or curves in one direction aren't as bad.
The contractor’s were not wearing any protective gear????? Goi g I to these homes… the one that had the sniffer, looked like collage age?????
2 regularly scheduled trains a day?? Why hasn't this been abandoned or trackage rights sold to a shortline?
It almost was, in 2015-16 it was discontinued as a thru route. Trains ran to Kingsport to serve the customers there and turned back. Coal was routed on the east coast then back west into this part of the Carolinas. But now with an uptick in traffic it's been a thru route again and you might get 4-6 moves per day, plus a local. Meanwhile, the former L&N through western Kentucky and Tennessee is getting sidings and double tracked ripped up as we speak. The northern portion of this route through Kentucky on the former C&O side is being single tracked as well except for sparing occasional sidings.
How can you afford to maintain a railway carrying only 2 trains per day?
That's a valid question. I forget if I mentioned it in this video but CSX has the tendency to move traffic around on various routes that ultimately can still reach the same destination in the southeast. In doing so, I am sure they fudge numbers on the backend to make their accounting look better at any given time, and may be able to get additional state or federal grants for infrastructure improvements. If nothing else, it allows them to perform track work on these lines while having a detour route that doesn't impede their overall network - something that is almost impossible to do where I live on NS. They have also single-tracked a lot of previously busy double-track routes in and around coal country to further reduce maintenance miles and work on switches and signals. I'm sure eventually this will all be history unless they can lobby for funds to get Amtrak on board to keep these areas alive.
@@CentralPennRailProductionsThanks for the explanation!
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Compro 10 trens para as ferrovias do município de Niterói Rio de Janeiro Brasil pede para o ministro da defesa cordenar tudo
ChainsawN&W1218, I have always liked the Clinchfield route alot of history from the big Alco 4-6-6-4s just like UP used to the story I seen on a show about all the fatalities blasting tunnels and they would bury the RR workers in the fills along the right of way,real scenic and nice video and shot of the signal dropping!🚂🛤
Yeah that's true, a lot of the workers killed were just buried along the tracks, it's possible I walked past some of those sites hiking through the woods to those tunnels. Kinda of an eerie feeling, but nonetheless their sacrifice has made it very easy on our current generation of transportation.
why not just make a train that can do this with 1 :I
Some attractive places along that line. Interesting pedestrian suspension bridge🚶♀️🌉 at4:00. I guess it says something that that old caboose, while heavily weathered, seems to have escaped being plastered all over with graffiti
Yeah, that Appalachian region of the US is filled with very interesting places! Thanks for watching.
Great Video!