My Little Black Book: A Day of Railroading in Wise County, VA, Tuesday, May 13, 1969

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I must have heard L&N train 855 blowing for the road crossing in the west end of town. Appalachia, VA was my hometown then. I walked over to the Pine Street crossing (our family residence was an apartment on Main Street, so train watching was quite convenient) to see what was up front. The SDP35 on the point wasn’t all that unusual, but new U30C 1539 was. Without much thought, I snapped a back-lit shot as the engineer started throttling up for the 10-mile climb to Norton, VA. While this was a new model for the L&N, Southern’s five U30Cs had been on the parallel main in the foreground the previous July—so the 1539 was not the first of that model in Appalachia.


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