RIGHT: With a friendly wave from the engineer, Extra 120 South flies across Copper Creek Viaduct near Speers Ferry, Va., on October 20, 2007. Behind the power are 110 loads of coal for South Carolina Public Service Authority.
BOTTOM: CSX Train U299, a loaded southbound South Carolina Public Service Authority unit coal train, rolls out of the south end of Miller Yard and approaches Townes Tunnel on August 14, 2008. Clinchfield had several tunnels with the distinctive “horseshoe” shaped portals. CW44AC No. 505 is in the lead.
OPPOSITE: From high atop Hills Mills Tunnel, we witness 110 CEFX coal loads coming south out of the deep and rugged Breaks on May 24, 2008. While the “Grand Canyon of the South” is mostly behind them, there’s still plenty of grade to climb, with the summit inside Sandy Ridge Tunnel still 24 miles away. ERIC MILLER PHOTOS
Mountains. Decisions had been made. The deed is done. As James Agee wrote, “The axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice.” And so it came to pass for the legendary Clinchfield Route. The Clinchfield was an artery, through
A
which coal, its lifeblood, flowed, and the lack of that coal eventually finished off the line. The non-coal traffic, once so noticeable amongst the parade of coal trains, was not enough to save the Clinchfield. What remains is essentially two branchlines, each with dubious prospects for the future. Now, the last time freight has traversed the length of the Clinchfield, and the last coal trains have tied up at Shelby and Spartanburg. Silence now reigns inside Sandy Ridge Tunnel, where only recently modern General Electric units filled the bore with sound and exhaust smoke as they crawled over the top with a mile of coal and steel hanging on their rear knuckle. As the blaze of fall color peaks across these mountains, a strange, new stillness and quiet has fallen, a silence not heard for one hundred years.
Clinchfield, we miss you already. 38 JANUARY 2016 •
RAILFAN.COM
ND SO IT WAS OVER for this storied and beloved railroad through the very heart of the rugged Appalachian
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