The Ballad of the B&O - a photo on Flickriver

            The wind picks up on a sunny March afternoon as clouds swiftly roll over the Shenandoah Valley. Just North of Staunton, Virginia, a distant blast of a Nathan M5 is heard echoing over the hills. After making a brief pause just short of Statler Boulevard, the engineer notches up SVRR 6512 to bring the train into town. The history of the Chesapeake Western is colorful at best, specifically on this section of the road. The Southern had built track from Riverton Junction to Harrisonburg, what is now known today as the B-Line extension. The B&O had track from Harper's Ferry, to a connection on the B Line extension at Strasburg, gaining trackage rights into Harrisonburg over the Southern. From there on, the B&O had built southwards to Lexington Virginia, where they met with the C&O on their aptly named Lexington Branch. With fruitful hopes to built a connection with the N&W at Salem, Virginia, these goals were never fulfilled and traffic had become almost stagnant on B&O's "Valley Railroad" by the 1930's. Combined with the B&O's removal of trackage rights over the Southern Railway, this island branch line served as a pretty solid loss in revenue. By 1942 the B&O had called it quits, and sold the line to the Chesapeake Western Railway. Almost immediately the CW ripped up track between Lexington and Staunton as most of, if not all of the traffic was going to Staunton for interchange with the C&O, the same road that also had track into Lexington. This served as vital addition to the CW as not 10 years earlier the CW was cutting back its own railroad from Stokesville/North River Gap to Bridgewater due to dwindling traffic and industry. Nowadays the line is served by DVGR under the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, serving multiple industries and shuttling cars between NS and BB.
   

Taken on: March 29, 2024

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Sets appears in: • Shenandoah Valley Railroad • Chesapeake Western

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Camera: Canon EOS 6D, f/5.0, 1/2000 sec, 225mm, ISO 250 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 6D
Lens:	EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Aperture:	f/5.0
Exposure Time:	0.001 sec (1/2000)
Focal Length:	225mm
ISO:	250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Lightroom 9.2.2 (Android)
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