Seen many of these? Built in Aug. of 1934 and with two axles and weighing 80,000 lbs, this ancient scale test car still plies the rails in coal country. Amazing. It'll be used next week by the USD... (more)

End of the line. Not often you find new trackage on a mainline built within the last year. The south tail track of Hagans Switchback has been extended to allow for no doubling of the trains as in ... (more)

With the old Consol VP #8 prep plant looming in the background, an old workhorse rusts under the coal loadout. This Consol met coal operation was closed down several years ago and is currently bei... (more)

Crews working on both sides of a derailed loaded coal hopper. The car must be unloaded by hand before being rerailed, not an easy task in blowing snow and cold temps.

With a trackmobile and five coal hoppers behind, the crew uses plenty of diesel and fusees to unthaw a frozen switch in extremely cold temperatures.

Using a pry bar, sledgehammer, and alot of muscle, the loadout crew closes a few open discharge doors before coal can be loaded.

At dusk, a NS autorack roars by War Eagle and the slide fences at 7:04 PM on a chilly evening on the Pocahontas.

Preparing to load a unit train at Kopper Glo off the Clearfork Branch, NS spots mtys under the 200 foot tall coal loadout silo which holds about 8,000 tons of cleaned and prepped coal. They load i... (more)

Riding a loaded Top Gon down the rails, hoping the brake works. Coal is still loaded in Appalachia the same way it was in the 40's in places, using gravity and light braking to roll the mty under ... (more)

In an odd scene, hoppers apparently involved in a derailment are trucked away from the old Petercave Coal yard in Martin County, KY on the Wolfcreek Branch of the Pokey. Just out of the pic to the... (more)

Hoping to make the crossing in time and with an arm stuck out for extra velocity and momentum, a Jeep crosses in front of half a loaded unit train of coal pointed downhill. The coal is destined fo... (more)

On the fifth coal hopper and seventy three to go, the engineer eases along as coal pours thru the loadout chute.

A unit train with a solo helper leaves the Powder River Basin in a cloud of coal dust as mtys with a solo helper arrive to take it's place.

Alco and a GMC. Taking on water at the halfway point of a long awaited excursion run, Southern 520 idles away at the end of the Tennessee RR with the Baldwin coal prep plant visible in the backgro... (more)

With these three units pulling and three pushing, Hill Run U86 attempts the ascent to Clarks Gap. Minutes later, one of the pushers will go down after exiting Tunnel 9. Both times I've witnessed... (more)