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

With a group of company execs looking on, an NS crew prepares to begin loading black diamonds at the National Coal Turley loadout.

As the sun creeps behind Turley Mountain to the west, NS 76G prepares to take the first of two cuts of mtys under the loadout. The loadout consists of three frontend loaders and takes six hours fo... (more)

A poet from the coalfields deep within West Virginia has chalked his prose upon a Conrail coal hopper. One must wonder how many tons of black diamonds have exited the state via the thirty or forty... (more)

While the brakeman lines the switches to head back north, a trackhoe snags one more overhanging cedar to clear the ROW. The worktrain will soon enter the tunnel under Cumberland Mountain and pop o... (more)

Sporting a new symbol for the KD, U335 runs out of Hickory Creek tunnel and towards Duff Mountain. No help will be needed today.

One of the last remaining wooden watertanks in the East, this one resides on the TN RR just below Oneida. The 42 mile long branch, once owned by Norfolk Southern and then National Coal Corporation... (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)

The Heartland Corridor project has begun on the Pokey, with work steadily progressing on Antler #2. As shown, the roof is being raised for doublestack containers soon to ply the iron of the Pokey,... (more)

Under threatening skies, rainbow colored ridges, and down to a literal crawl, pusher set J61 shoves hard uphill over the massive Trace Fork trestle enroute to Cedar Bluff. Undergoing tests with th... (more)

With four trains either loading or on the Joint Line, the Powder River Basin stays busy as usual. You can rest assured that there are plenty more over the rise, what with over 120 unit trains a da... (more)

Constantly on the guard for rattlersnakes and copperheads in an area heavily infested by snakes, a brakeman has written a reminder to future crews. The Royal Blue spur serves the International Pap... (more)

Trains don't come 'round here no more... The greens of Summer are slowly reclaiming the upper stretch of the Clearfork Branch, which once hosted three coal loadouts and almost daily traffic up int... (more)

At dawn with a heavy rain falling in front of the headlights, an RJ Corman crewmember looks back at the loadout to check on the status of loaded hoppers. A power outage an hour later would slow lo... (more)

Fourteen mtys hit the ground, with five overturning in this derailment fourteen miles from Oneida. The derailment was blamed on the gauge at the time , though never heard of the end cause. RJ Corm... (more)