There's a new short line in RR land today, anyone gonna model it?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

As of today, there is a new coal-hauling short line in Appalachia, The Appalachian & Ohio RR. CSX has leased 117 miles of track between Grafton and Cowen, West Virginia, plus five short branch lines. Operations begin at midnight Thursday. No idea what motive power will be used, or even what the colors will be. Thinking about going out there to take a look soon, do a little railfanning.
There is a helper section on the Grafton-Cowen line due to the steep grades. The RR’s headquarters will be at Buckhannon, WV, and if made the permanent site will eventually have car and locomotive shops.

Sound interesting to anyone?

2

West Virginia mountian coal hauling? Railroading don’t get any better than that! Plus an engine shop … that railroad would be right up my alley.

Ken

3

Like Ken said…rural coal hauling is it!!! Especially with hills and mountains.

underworld

[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

4

All Right! I smell another Hostile take over!! They say I’m the UP or MR’ng![:D]

Congrats
Fergie

5

Very interesting! I would love to see this line.

OK, since no one else is going to ask, I will. Is this your model layout theme or is this an honest-to-goodness real railroad? [:P]

6

The A&O is a real road.

7

There’s a new short line going in in my town as well, Don’t know much about it. Haven’t seen a train yet, though it’ll be close enought to shake the vitamins off the shelves. It runs from a local mine to a power plant. They are revamping the old B, R & P line that ran through town.

8

This was posted on another site about the motive power for the A&O
http://forums.railfan.net/forums.cgi?board=WestVirginia;action=display;num=1109180137

9

I have noticed quite a bit of this–big railroads have started spinning off their less-profitable branches into separate smaller railroads. I was reading in the January TRAINS that BNSF just spun off three branch lines into new short lines.

Maybe a new era of the short line is at hand?

10

Here is the website for the A&O:
http://www.watcocompanies.com/Railroads/A&O/A&O%20main%20page.htm
Not much information but has a map.

soumodeler

The Southern Serves the South!
http://www.trainweb.org/mgr

11

There’s already a fine model railroad with that name. It started in HO, but was converted to 2-rail O scale several years ago. Unfortunately, it’s now torn down due to the owner’s moving, but it lives on on the web. Visit www.aorailroad.com for a good tour of the operation…