Eastern Railroad Discussion > A 7 Mile Coal Line: The Big Eagle Railroad

11/9/2016

In the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia, a 7 mile railroad has been hauling the same commodity since the 1850s when it was originally built as a narrow gauge line. This railroad is known today as the "Big Eagle Railroad" and is an operation of Appalachian Rail Services (ARS). The construction of this railroad predates the arrival of CSX's former C&O mainline that it interchanges with by about 20 years.

When it was originally constructed, the purpose of the line was to haul coal from a mine in Winifrede, WV to a transload located along the Kanawha River at Winifrede Junction, located between Chesapeake and Chelyan, WV. Unfortunately, the transload operations ceased in 2013. Throughout most of its history, it was known as the Winifrede Railroad. The railroad has been through periods of being in operation and bleak times of being idle. The most recent period of the line being idle was in the 1990s. Today, all coal trains Big Eagle loads are bound for export. 

In 2000, operations resumed under the Big Eagle name using a pair of JTPX geeps. JTPX 2011 was originally built for the Ferrocariles Nacionales de México (NDEM). Still sporting UP paint, JTPX 2012 was originally built for the IC and later on became part of the MKT.

Currently, when Big Eagle gets an empty train from CSX, they load the train as separate cuts of cars. In this video, we watch as they take a cut of empties to the mine and then take loads back to Winifrede Junction.

For those interested, here's a link to a website that goes into greater detail regarding the history and operations of the railroad: http://wvncrails.weebly.com/winifrede-big-eagle-railroad.html

Enjoy and thanks for looking.

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Interesting video; thanks for sharing with us.  The track sure could use some work though and hopefully as they continue to move their trains they don't have anything go on the ground.
John

a real gem! amazing what you find tucked in the hollers of WV. check out that jointed rail. tks for sharing - great stuff.

Thanks for posting-an interesting and imformative piece. Have wondered what happened to the Winifrede.
George Melvin

nice video, have heard of RR. But when CSX delivers an empty train, how many cars? the shuttles, how many empties up to the mine and how many loads back? i would think that CSX would not entertain any rates for less than 70 cars per train.

Great video, particularly all the different scenes you got. Seems like their shop or maintainence base is in the middle of the video? And I noticed that the shot of the loads on the s-curve showed at least 20, but then the shot as the train goes under CSX had less than 10, any idea why?

 

JLinDE Wrote:
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> nice video, have heard of RR. But when CSX
> delivers an empty train, how many cars?

CSX sent them about 100 empties a day or two before this was shot.

> the shuttles, how many empties up to the mine and how
> many loads back? i would think that CSX would not
> entertain any rates for less than 70 cars per
> train.

When I caught them running, they took 23 empties up to the mine at around 7:30 am, loaded them in about 2 hours, then took them back to Winifrede Junction. They then took 21 empties up to the mine at 12:30 pm, which was the last cut of the 100 that needed to be loaded. I didn't see what happened afterwards but I'm guessing they loaded all 21 and took them back to the interchange as the crew usually quits between 4 and 5 pm. They loaded the first half of the train on the previous day which leads me to believe it takes them about two days to load a 100 car train.

inCHI Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Great video, particularly all the different scenes
> you got. Seems like their shop or maintainence
> base is in the middle of the video?

That was the engine house. It hasn't been used in some time. Any maintenance performed on the geeps is now done outside.
 
> And I noticed that the shot of the loads on the s-curve showed
> at least 20, but then the shot as the train goes
> under CSX had less than 10, any idea why?

When they left the mine, it was 23 cars. However, before they passed under CSX, they stopped and uncoupled the cars. They took the first 13 to store them in whatever way they saw fit in the yard and then came back for the remaining 10. I wanted to show that in this video but I excluded it due to TO's maximum video time limit of 6 minutes.

          We will be patient and wait for the other videos of this line. No problem in giving us 6 minutes at a time. Also, could you get some video or photos of the trackage up close where ever you can.