All Aboard!

Groups Get Ready For Fall Excursions

At 3:30 last Thursday afternoon, Scott Henderson was lifting wooden rails for a new split-rail fence into place.

The 16-year employee of Will Harris’ North Fork Lumber said he’d been at it since about noon. Nearby were others working on the fence, including Will Harris’ son Tommy Harris, while Will’s other son, Lee, was at the other end of field that now goes by Victoria Station. A dump truck pulled in after a while and deposited a load of gravel in the background.

Everyone was focused and busy, as the crew faced a oneweek deadline of helping to get the site ready for the second season of fall steam train excursions based out of Goshen. The excursions, which start this Friday and run for five weekends, will once again be pulled by the famed Norfolk & Western Class J No. 611.

The 611, along with a restored tool car from the Virginia Museum of Transportation, had begun its journey from Roanoke that morning, pulled by an N&W diesel. The most recent estimated time for arrival in Goshen for the 611 and the passenger cars it was picking up in Staunton was 6 p.m.

Lee Harris, when told the latest ETA, did some calculations in his head and said it would more likely be after 7.

The train arrived after dark, about 7:45. -With the arrival of the 611 and passenger cars Thursday, the activity at the field on the southern outskirts of Goshen is picking up this week in preparation for the steam train excursions.

This year’s excursions are a joint venture of the Virginia Scenic Railway, which is operated by the Buckingham Branch Railway; the Steam Railroading Institute in Michigan, which is providing 10 passenger cars; the Virginia Museum of Transportation, which is providing the 611; and the nonprofit Virginia Mechanical Preservation Society, which is leasing the Goshen site from Will Harris.

Members with the different organizations were arriving in Goshen Monday and Tuesday to help in the preparations.

Officials and volunteers with the Steam Railroading Institute were to have arrived yesterday, Tuesday, to begin setting up the two large tents for the ticketing area and gift shop. They are also finishing up some work on the passenger cars.

The tents will be set up in a different location this time. Two years ago, they were set up at the back of the train, but the entrance is now across from the middle of the train to allow easier access for passengers to both the locomotive and the passenger cars.

With that as the goal, the Harris family and workers constructed the split-rail fence across the length of the large gravel parking lot that was created two years ago that will “funnel” passengers to the center of the lot, where a cut-over will take passengers to the ticketing tent. Four to five people worked throughout the weekend, said Harris, and completed the fence Monday.

Harris has also been in charge of arranging vendors for the site. The Goshen Volunteer Fire Department will be selling food all day alongside Bizzee B’s BBQ Mobile Eatery and Catering every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Also setting up booths on the site will be the N&W Historical Society and the C&O Historical Society, along with Lexington & Rockbridge Area Tourism.

The train this year will have an entirely different look. The Steam Railroading Institute’s 10 passenger cars include seven of its Canadian National coaches, two dining cars and a Pennsylvania Railroad car, all of which date from the 1950s. The Buckingham Branch Railroad will be providing two cars, a table car and a dome car with an all-glass enclosure on top for people to have a 360-degree view.

With 12 passenger cars in tow, the excursions will have a total of 750 seats available for the round trip from Victoria Station in Goshen to Staunton. That’s about 100 more than were available per trip during the 2023 excursions.

The train will be accompanied by two diesel engines from the Buckingham Branch Railroad, according to Steve Powell, president of the railroad. The two diesel engines will serve separate purposes. One engine will provide electricity to the passenger cars for air-conditioning, lighting, and the bathroom facilities, and the other will be used to pull the train back to Victoria Station from Staunton because there is no place for the train to turn around.

Powell was among those helping with the preparations Monday, working on new benches for passengers and onlookers to use.

Tickets are still available for a ride through “the most beautiful part of our railroad,” Powell said, but finding a seat for the later dates in October will be more difficult than the first two weekends.

That’s not to say that people aren’t able to see the train for themselves if they aren’t able to secure a ticket to ride. “Come down to Victoria Station and come on up to the train. Take pictures … and enjoy it,” he said.

According to a Facebook post by the Goshen Volunteer Fire Department, Victoria Station will be open to spectators during the excursion periods from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. Spectators are asked to park in the parking lot and walk to the train, and to not climb on the rail cars or the 611. -The cars from the Steam Railroading Institute had left Michigan Sept. 13 and arrived in Roanoke last Wednesday, and were then taken to Staunton to be picked up by the 611 on its way through on Thursday.

The 75-year-old steam locomotive and tool car left the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke about 9:35 last Thursday morning, pulled by a Norfolk & Western diesel engine. The entourage crossed the James River at Natural Bridge Station about 11:30 a.m. before proceeding through Glasgow, Buena Vista and Vesuvius on its way to Waynesboro. About the middle of the afternoon, when it reached Waynesboro, the escorting of the 611 and its cars become the responsibility of the Buckingham Branch Railroad, whose engine pulled it to Staunton.

There the engines picked up the passenger cars before heading to Goshen.

The progress of the 611 had been tracked by “train chasers” throughout the day and reported on various 611 Facebook sites by photographers waiting along the tracks and at crossings. There were similar gatherings in Rockbridge County.

On the south side of the main railroad crossing in Goshen, across from the old depot, several local men waited for hours in the late afternoon. Two of them talked about their fathers who worked for railroads, one of them starting in the 1940s. They knew the names of the different railroad crossings north of Goshen, so when they received word of where the train was at various points, they knew exactly where it was.

They had seen the 611 before. A younger man who lived near Brownsburg had not and had waited with the others for his chance to see and photograph the engine. When the diesel pulling the 611 and passenger cars “backwards” finally came around the bend, it was well past dark and taking photos was essentially futile. You could make out the 611’s nameplate, though, as it passed through the lighted crossing.

He said he planned to come back to see it in the daylight in the coming weekends.