Max Length & Tonnage along New River in VA?

[Conrail Tweety]

I'm curious about the NS guidelines for the maximum tonnage and length before an Extra is required on runs along the New River.

Whitethorne max length?
Whitethorne EB max tonnage?
Whitethorne WB max tonnage to Bluefield?
Whitethorne WB max tonnage to Princeton?

Christiansburg max length?
Christiansburg EB max tonnage?
Christiansburg WB max tonnage to Bluefield?
Christiansburg WB max tonnage to Princeton?
Christiansburg WB max tonnage to Radford?

Any weather related variances?

Power needed at max tonnage if running WB on Whitethorne?

[ziggy44]

The power you can use by NS rules is 24 high adhesion axles which equals out to 3 six axel units. Usually all east bound coal trains go whitethorn and usually only have 2 units. Tonnage varies between 14,000 to 20,000 ++ tons on coal trains.
East bound bluefield to walton=25650 tons
East bound walton to Roanoke=16290
West bound Roanoke to walton=10770
Westbound walton to Roanoke=10080
Don’t see anything on max length I have been on one that was 11,000 ft. long that’s rare though.
These are really not limits to the track that is all the locomotives are good for and I wouldn’t push that.
Sometimes they push trains from walton to Christiansburg if they are working on the whitethorn side for some reason or another.
As far as the whitethorn side tonnage doesn’t matter they push from VP Farms to the tunnel at Merrimack. As a rule of thumb anything over about 130 cars gets pushed.
Princeton is part of the Pocahontas Div. don’t know much about that I’m on Virginia Div.
Hope this helps.

[Conrail Tweety]

Yes it helps, thank you very much!

I thought maybe there was a train length limit related to the length of passing sidings along a section. Just a guess.

For traffic between Columbus and Roanoke areas, if Pocahontas District was down, would Princeton-Deepwater Dictrict be used as an alternate? Or would traffic go thru Radford instead?

[Conrail Tweety]

Sometimes they push trains from walton to Christiansburg if they are working on the whitethorn side for some reason or another.

Does V51/V52/V53 come over for this or is something else brought in?

[ziggy44]

I think that is considered a extra job since the job description for those is whitethorn pusher. I will have to check on that one. As far as traffic through Princeton I think it is rerouted to Bluefield. Not sure on that one either. I have heard some of the Pocahontas guys talking in the call office about some way they go from Flattop to Princeton. I’ll see if I can find out from one of the Pocie guys.