Trains in Tunnels

This past Saturday I ventured out to the Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield Va (aka injun territory) for the first annual Norfolk Southern Railroad Days. The main attractions for me was getting to walk the railway through the tunnels and getting to see the Norfolk Southern Heritage engine painted and lettered for the Virginian Railway.

the Virginian is an EMD SD70ACe - bigger than you think

the nose

the crossing light and horn at the pedestrian crossover

oh, i forgot, an Operation Lifesaver C40-9W engine was there too
here it's moving backwards into the tunnel

Norfolk Southern paid homage to its predecessor railroads during its 30th anniversary year by painting 20 new locomotives in commemorative schemes that reflect the heritage of those predecessors. Go here if you're interested: http://www.nscorp.com/nscportal/nscorp/Community/Heritage%20Locomotives

#1 1069 Virginian

Big Water

After a weeks worth of rain I wanted to go see how much water was flowing over some of the waterfalls around home. The problem is that most waterfall hikes require multiple creek crossings, but creeks that are flooding makes that a non-starter. So I needed a waterfall that I could get to without a creek crossing ... there's only two that I can think of : Rock Fork and 

There was a break in the rain on Saturday morning, so I talked the spousal unit into accompanying me on the relatively short walk. We'd easily be done before the rain started again, right?

The Nolichuckey river was way up and way muddy. But as we got to the creeks higher up they were running full, but not real muddy, excellent. There were a few hardy folk trout fishing in the Rocky Fork creek, it looked like a waste of time to me, lots of water with a lot of color, but they were hard at it. 

The first picture is Rocky Fork Falls taken from along the main road. There was so much water flowing and it was generating so much mist that getting a picture from down along the creek bank just wasn't going to happen.

The second picture is of the triple falls ... except there's so much water flowing that you can't tell there's supposed to be three distinct sections to the drop.

The last picture is of the last waterfall along the creek. Again there's so much water rolling that it loses all of it's recognizable features.