Rivanna Chapter, NRHS May Meeting

NATIONAL RAILWAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Rivanna Chapter

Charlottesville, Virginia

Amtrak Excursion

April 2006

On Saturday, April 29, 2006, twelve Rivanna Chapter Members, along with two potential members, gathered at Richmond’s historic Main Street Station to ride Amtrak on CSX’s ex-C&O Peninsula Subdivision to Newport News and return. The weather was absolutely fabulous throughout the day on what proved to be a wonderful trip for all. Everyone arrived in time to enjoy seeing the famous old station restored to its former glory. Train #67 arrived about 45 minutes late, due principally to congestion through Richmond’s Acca Yard and having to wait for northbound Amtrak #194 to clear before reaching the station. Once we were all aboard, though, the engineer made up time, despite several track maintenance-related slow orders, as we whisked by the Richmond airport and through Williamsburg and Lee Hall, while often parallel to Route 60…and passing all of the cars! A check of passing mileposts against my watch verified that we were often clipping along at 45 seconds to the mile…a track speed of approximately 80 MPH!

We finally pulled into Newport News station, where we were met by Skip Barber, Tim McNeely and Clint White, members of the Peninsula Model Railroad Club (an N-scale group), who graciously drove us all to an open house at the Chesapeake Bay and Western Model Railroad Club in York County. This group has a stand alone building which encloses a massive, two level HO scale layout that must be seen to be believed…the two huge helixes used to raise and lower trains from one level to the other were very impressive. Following the visit of the CB&W club, we headed to a delicious lunch at Anna’s Pizza near Langley Air Force Base (the same family owns Anna’s in Charlottesville…our waitress was the great-grand-daughter of the original Anna!).

We then had enough time for a group photo in front of C&O #2756, a K-4 2-8-4 Kanawha (Berkshire) Class steam locomotive which sits on display across the street from the Newport News station, before boarding #66 for the return trip to Richmond. The train departed Newport News right on time, though the same slow orders put us into Richmond about 20 minutes behind schedule. Still it was a great day to ride trains and everyone had a great time!

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Updated May 7, 2006