Sometime last year I posted a request for info on this route from Logan to Pomeroy, Ohio but found out very little. Later, I remembered an old acquaintance from Gallia county, and decided to contact him. I was very glad that I did, because he provided some great information!
From the time he arrived in Gallipolis in the "mid-1960s" (no specific year given), into at least the mid-1970s, operations were as follows:
The crew of the Pomeroy sub. local would go on duty at Oldtown yard in Logan during the late afternoon (no specific time given) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They would switch customers on their way east/south to Pomeroy. It was nearly 25 miles to the first customer, a small factory (brickyard?) at McArthur. It was nearly another 25 miles to the next customer, Keener Sand, at Kerr, a few miles northwest of Gallipolis. They loaded boxcars with bagged casting sand, and they were the only "old-time" customer to continue shipping through the mid and late 1980s during the AEP era. There was also a Westvaco wood yard nearby, at Bidwell. There were a few small customers in and near Gallipolis, too. Middleport had two regular shippers in the 1960s: a bakery, which received boxcars of flour, and Texaco, which received boxcar loads of grease and oil in cans and tubes.
The train, which usually consisted of one loco, a few cars, and a caboose, would usually arrive at the Pomeroy freight house around 10:00pm. There was a bunk area in the freight house, where the crew would spend the night.
They would go on duty at 7:00am (or eight hours after they marked off duty the previous night, if it was after 11pm) the next day (on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), and switch customers in Pomeroy, which were east of the freight house along the Ohio river. Customers there included an agricultural lime unloading facility at the end of track (milepost 135 from Columbus), Provico animal feed (they received feed in DT&I covered hoppers), a lumber yard, Midwest steel (a maker of specialty (non-railroad) rail), and Excelsior salt, which received salt in MoPac boxcars, (which he speculated were picked up at the B&O interchange at Dundas). Interestingly, the steel loads going into Midwest steel were brought into the C&O's Pomeroy yard by NYC/PC/Conrail on trackage rights from Hobson, and the next C&O train into town would move the load the next 2 miles to the plant.
Afterwards, the crew would return north/westbound to Logan. Again, this would have been on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Traffic spiked in the early 1970s during construction of the Gavin Power plant at Cheshire, just upriver from Gallipolis. He remembers seeing one particular train at Pomeroy with two GP-9s and about 30 cars, mostly gons and flats used to haul steel and electrical equipment into the plant site. These occasionally longer trains ended when construction was complete. Incidently, there was virtually no coal business on the line by the mid-1960s.
The C&O filed to abondon the Pomeroy Sub. about 1975, but it was denied due to protests from online customers - imagine that!!. After this, one by one, most of the customers either closed or switched to trucks, and the regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday eastbound, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday north/westbound operating pattern declined to just "as needed".
An Ohio River flood in late February 1979 damaged the trackbed near Middleport/Pomeroy, and this was the perfect excuse for the C&O to stop service east of Hobson, into Pomeroy. About 5 cars were trapped east of the damage, in Pomeroy, for several weeks before being gathered and pushed west to Hobson by a front-end loader, where they were picked up by the local for movement back to Logan. Apparently the damage was too severe for a locomotive to pass over, but not so bad that rollong stock couldn't be maneuvered over it.
As-needed service from Logan to as far east as the power plant at Cheshire continued into 1982, when finally Chessie reached an agreement to serve the line via the Conrail bridge at Gallipolis from the B&O ohio river line at Point Pleasant. It was also in this year that the AEP coal trains began running between Minerton (a few miles north of Vinton, and about 5-6 miles south of Eagle Tunnel) and the Gavin plant at Cheshire. With no customers north of the mine, the trackage was left dormant from there north to dundas, and removed north of Dundas to Logan, about 1986. Welded rail was laid from the mine to Kanauga in 1982 to accomadate the new, heavy trains.
The trackage was left intact Minerton to Dundas because AEP had considered building a coal washer at Dundas. Coal from various nearby mines would have been trucked there, washed, and loaded into hoppers for movement south to the power plant. This never materialized, though, and the trackage rusted away and became overgrown into the early 1990s.
The AEP coal trains ended in 1991 or 1992 when the mine merged underground with another mine. That other mine moved it's coal via conveyor belt to the plant, and, once merged, all of the coal went that way and the trains weren't needed anymore.
The rails were removed from Kanauga, where conrail trackage rights began, to Dundas shortly thereafter, in 1992 or 1993.
I think that covers it........
From the time he arrived in Gallipolis in the "mid-1960s" (no specific year given), into at least the mid-1970s, operations were as follows:
The crew of the Pomeroy sub. local would go on duty at Oldtown yard in Logan during the late afternoon (no specific time given) on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They would switch customers on their way east/south to Pomeroy. It was nearly 25 miles to the first customer, a small factory (brickyard?) at McArthur. It was nearly another 25 miles to the next customer, Keener Sand, at Kerr, a few miles northwest of Gallipolis. They loaded boxcars with bagged casting sand, and they were the only "old-time" customer to continue shipping through the mid and late 1980s during the AEP era. There was also a Westvaco wood yard nearby, at Bidwell. There were a few small customers in and near Gallipolis, too. Middleport had two regular shippers in the 1960s: a bakery, which received boxcars of flour, and Texaco, which received boxcar loads of grease and oil in cans and tubes.
The train, which usually consisted of one loco, a few cars, and a caboose, would usually arrive at the Pomeroy freight house around 10:00pm. There was a bunk area in the freight house, where the crew would spend the night.
They would go on duty at 7:00am (or eight hours after they marked off duty the previous night, if it was after 11pm) the next day (on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday), and switch customers in Pomeroy, which were east of the freight house along the Ohio river. Customers there included an agricultural lime unloading facility at the end of track (milepost 135 from Columbus), Provico animal feed (they received feed in DT&I covered hoppers), a lumber yard, Midwest steel (a maker of specialty (non-railroad) rail), and Excelsior salt, which received salt in MoPac boxcars, (which he speculated were picked up at the B&O interchange at Dundas). Interestingly, the steel loads going into Midwest steel were brought into the C&O's Pomeroy yard by NYC/PC/Conrail on trackage rights from Hobson, and the next C&O train into town would move the load the next 2 miles to the plant.
Afterwards, the crew would return north/westbound to Logan. Again, this would have been on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Traffic spiked in the early 1970s during construction of the Gavin Power plant at Cheshire, just upriver from Gallipolis. He remembers seeing one particular train at Pomeroy with two GP-9s and about 30 cars, mostly gons and flats used to haul steel and electrical equipment into the plant site. These occasionally longer trains ended when construction was complete. Incidently, there was virtually no coal business on the line by the mid-1960s.
The C&O filed to abondon the Pomeroy Sub. about 1975, but it was denied due to protests from online customers - imagine that!!. After this, one by one, most of the customers either closed or switched to trucks, and the regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday eastbound, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday north/westbound operating pattern declined to just "as needed".
An Ohio River flood in late February 1979 damaged the trackbed near Middleport/Pomeroy, and this was the perfect excuse for the C&O to stop service east of Hobson, into Pomeroy. About 5 cars were trapped east of the damage, in Pomeroy, for several weeks before being gathered and pushed west to Hobson by a front-end loader, where they were picked up by the local for movement back to Logan. Apparently the damage was too severe for a locomotive to pass over, but not so bad that rollong stock couldn't be maneuvered over it.
As-needed service from Logan to as far east as the power plant at Cheshire continued into 1982, when finally Chessie reached an agreement to serve the line via the Conrail bridge at Gallipolis from the B&O ohio river line at Point Pleasant. It was also in this year that the AEP coal trains began running between Minerton (a few miles north of Vinton, and about 5-6 miles south of Eagle Tunnel) and the Gavin plant at Cheshire. With no customers north of the mine, the trackage was left dormant from there north to dundas, and removed north of Dundas to Logan, about 1986. Welded rail was laid from the mine to Kanauga in 1982 to accomadate the new, heavy trains.
The trackage was left intact Minerton to Dundas because AEP had considered building a coal washer at Dundas. Coal from various nearby mines would have been trucked there, washed, and loaded into hoppers for movement south to the power plant. This never materialized, though, and the trackage rusted away and became overgrown into the early 1990s.
The AEP coal trains ended in 1991 or 1992 when the mine merged underground with another mine. That other mine moved it's coal via conveyor belt to the plant, and, once merged, all of the coal went that way and the trains weren't needed anymore.
The rails were removed from Kanauga, where conrail trackage rights began, to Dundas shortly thereafter, in 1992 or 1993.
I think that covers it........
