The Shenandoah Valley Railroad is a

shortline railroad A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that operates over a relatively short distance relative to larger, national railroad networks. The term is used primarily in the United States and Canada. In the former, railroads are ...

operating of track between Staunton and Pleasant Valley,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. The railroad interchanges with

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

and Buckingham Branch in Staunton and

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

in Pleasant Valley. The railroad was purchased from Norfolk Southern in 1993 and is currently operated by the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad.

History

The Shenandoah Valley Railroad's route was owned by the Chesapeake Western Railway until February 1992, when Norfolk Southern abandoned it due to low usage. Local parties acquired the line and contracted to various operators such as the Buckingham Branch Railroad before settling on the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad once adequate traffic returned. In 2019, a new cold storage facility served by the Shenandoah Valley Railroad opened in Mount Crawford.

Heritage locomotives

The railroad operates a restored B&O GP9, No. 6512, painted in B&O's blue and yellow colors. The locomotive was restored by the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad. It was acquired from Kanawha River Terminal’s coal facility in Ceredo, WV. The company also operates ALCO RS-11 No. 367 with a Norfolk & Western colors and EMD GP9 No. 5940 with Chesapeake & Ohio colors.

Gallery

File:SV1PlesantValley.jpg, The Norfolk Southern interchange at Pleasant Valley, photo taken from the cab of Shenandoah Valley's GP38 File:Shenandoah Valley Railroad - SV8701 loco.jpg, alt=SV 8701 was ex-US Army 4043, later DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) 87001, an RS4TC with serial number 61286, seen here in Vernona. Mechanical difficulties led to the locomotive being retired from the roster and sold for scrap. The frame, minus its trucks, was seen at the Cresson Steel Company scrap yard, 621 Penn Avenue, Cresson, PA, in May 2021., SV 8701 was ex-US Army 4043, later DLA (Defense Logistics Agency) 87001, an RS4TC with serial number 61286, seen here in

Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...

. Mechanical difficulties led to the locomotive being retired from the roster and sold for scrap. File:SV2015.jpg, SV leased this LLPX

EMD GP38 The EMD GP38 is a four-axle diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between January 1966 and December 1971. The locomotive's prime mover was an EMD 645 16- cylinder engine that generated . The company bui ...

seen here at Weyer's Cave File:DGVR40 Staunton WJGrimes.JPG, SV 40 at Staunton

References

External links

More pictures
at HawkinsRails Virginia railroads Spin-offs of the Norfolk Southern Railway Non-operating common carrier freight railroads in the United States Transportation in Augusta County, Virginia Transportation in Rockingham County, Virginia Transportation in Staunton, Virginia {{Virginia-transport-stub