Ashe County Historical Society Museum & Touring Virginia Creeper Train Diorama 

Hi BR&W Crew, Below you will find a link to a video chapter entitled “Let’s Plan the Excursion - Blue Ridge & Western Railroad Meets its Birthplace?” I just recently returned from an excursion that yielded such a chapter headline. As we all well know, our BR&W railroad descends into North Carolina toward the peninsula we call “Crowder” with its “Buzzard’s Roost Coal Tipple”. What you may not recall is when I was researching our BR&W narrative, Google Earth maps revealed to me the village of “Meat Camp” NC, just north of Boone, NC and east of Mountain City TN. Our “Crockett Brothers Steak Company” we located to “Meat Camp”. What this video makes abundantly clear - our BR&W RR short line could easily have become “The Virginia Creeper Train”, originally the Abingdon Iron & Ore Company, merged with the Virginia Carolina Railway, and ultimately acquired by the Norfolk & Western Railroad. Of particular note to me, is how the Ashe County Historical Society’s museum modeled a working Ore Mine. Imagine how we could replicate this treatment in the space below our Crowder Buzzard’s Roost Coal Tipple! Now, I have long pondered how we could “connect” the Crowder peninsula to our Milton & Monterey Branch analog layout. And the answer I propose (for the distant future) is that our M&M Branch convert into the Virginia Creeper Branch (abandoned by N&S in 1977). The Virginia connection at White Top Mountain descends (as it already does to Damascus) also to the town of West Jefferson NC. Now in humility, I confess that I am now more fully convinced that our own Stephen Corlew petitioned correctly. That “the narrative of the BR&WRR” should have been that in the 1980’s the BR&WRR was absorbed into the Norfolk Southern. Underscoring that point, our Hamil Hill Yard in Abingdon, VA indeed overlaps the Abingdon Iron & Ore Company Railroad that was absorbed into N&W in 1915. Final point here. While our fascination with competing with the Clinchfield and labeling the BR&WRR as a coal hauler, the truth is that the Blue Ridge Mountains from Roanoke to Carolina identify a sub-range known as the “Iron Mountain Range”. Given its proximity to Boone, NC, our “Buzzard’s Roost Tipple” really ought to be mining Iron, Copper, Steel and Manganese. So with all those fun facts delivered, it’s my pleasure to share this Video Tour of the Virginia Creeper Train, permanently on exhibit in Jefferson NC at the Ashe County Historical Society. Who wants to take a road trip?!?

Nice video, gotta visit it when it gets cooler outside