Doublestacks West of Roanoke?

[Conrail Tweety]

I'm creating activies for MS TrainSimulator and looking for accuracy. This includes intermodal runs west of Roanoke to and from Bluefield and Princeton.

After looking at map on p. 20 if this document:
http://www.nscorp.com/nscorphtml/speech ... 060607.pdf

Are my conclusions correct here?:

1) No doublestacks run between Bluefield and Roanoke.

2) Doublestacks run between Princeton and Roanoke.

3) No doublestacks run in Virginia between Narrows and Walton thru tunnels at Pembroke and Eggleston.


Also, loaded autoracks heading toward Roanoke. Which yard sees most of them, Bluefield or Princeton?

(Train numbers would be helpful.)

[red rover]

Conrail Twitty,
I am not an expert on the NS Bluefield Area but I do travel through
the area and I always take time to Railfan and quiz the local NS workers.
There are no doublestaks between Roanoke and Bluefield. I have not
observed an Intermodal going to Princeton and I do not believe they
travel that route. The Heartland Corridor Project is to enlarge 28 or
so tunnels between Bluefield and Huntington to accomodate the
doublestacks. Estimate completition is 2009.
Thanks,
red rover

[NS212]

Not all too familiar with the area, but I do know that Princeton is mostly all coal and maybe some local freight.

[RichM]

Stacks move to Roanoke from SW to NE via the Bristol-Abingdon-Marion routing.

[Conrail Tweety]

Thanks,

I wasn't sure about Princeton. I've never seen an intermodal on that line.

It seems like the majority of trains passing thru Radford are stacks.

[RichM]

My kid is in college at Emory and Henry. I've seen everything from manifest freights, to strings of acid tank cars, to containers speeding by, so I'd expect the mix continues to be EVERYTHING.

[red rover]

According to the latest in Rail News, NS was to begin work on enlarging
the 28 tunnels between Bluefield & Williamson in January. They were
going to reroute some singlestacks and manifest freights from Bluefield
-Princeton-Mullens-Gilbert-to Williamson.
Has anyone heard about this..or observed more traffic on this route?

[ziggy44]

I am a conductor on that district Roanoke to Bluefield and Roanoke to Bristol. No doublestacks run past Walton on the Christiansburg district, which is Walton to Bluefield. That is what the heartland project is for read my post in this forum. Doublestacks run Pulaski distict only, Walton to Bristol. Princeton is the Pocahontas div. it runs coal only. It runs from PD Junction to Princeton.

[Conrail Tweety]

Thanks ziggy44,

That was the info I was looking for!

Dennis