The Blackwater and Blue Ridge Railroad is a fictional railroad line that exist only in the eccentric creative corners of my mind. You could ascertain by the name that the locale is Appalachia but it could just as easily be located "somewhere west". Time frame is loosely in the first part of the 1900's, more specifically maybe 1925 to 1935. It is a railroad that is lost both in space, and in time. At it's heart, it's a logging railroad, but mining has played a large part in it's recent prosperity.
The story of this little railroad begins with a man named Colonel Miguel Arthur or as he is known to most, "The Colonel".
Miguel Arthur was a man who was thought to have a death wish because of his blatant disregard for his own safety. That streak of carelessness and an uncanny penchant for luck in the worst of circumstances is what made him a legend in his own time. Not much is known of the man before he enlisted in the army and his exploits began to be talked about far and wide. His "courage" and luck served him well and he quickly rose through the ranks to become a Colonel. He is said to have fought with honor and valor in the "Great War". Most of what's known about him though starts after the war. Shortly after it was over, his Father passed and left him a fairly substantial sum of money. Rumors abound that his Father's fortune was ill gotten, that it came largely from stolen Confederate gold but nothing has ever been proven. What we know for sure is that after a case of wanderlust that sent him tooling around the frontier, the Colonel finally set eyes on the tiny mountain hamlet of Blackwater where he met a beautiful woman named Mariah and settled down. It was here it's said, that he took part in a week long poker and drinking binge and came into ownership of the Blackwater and Blue Ridge Railroad. No one speaks much about the previous owners, it's said they left town, in the dark, in a hurry and in disgrace after losing all their assets to the Colonel.
The Sighattica mountains were once rich in timber and for the most part it had been untouched when the Colonel first got a look at it. Inefficient "splash logging" was being used to float the timber down the Blackwater River from where it had been hewn, on to a sawmill located in the town of Furlow and the previous owners of the little railroad had sought to change that. Standard gauge trackage had made it from Furlow to Blackwater but not any further into the mountains. The original owners intent had been to lay narrow gauge rails up into the mountains to save money but the Colonel saw no sense in moving logs from one kind of equipment to the other and the standard gauge rails forged into the mountains bringing down huge logs of the then plentiful poplar and chestnut native to the area. By 1925 or so logging was going full bore and the story of the railroad might have ended pretty quickly after the lumber was gone if not for a strange turn of fortune that many attribute to the Colonel's uncanny luck.
The intrepid wilderness explorer, John Wraungway arrived in town and set about exploring as wilderness explorers are wont to do. As his name would foreshadow, he became hopelessly lost and no one saw or heard from him for at least two weeks. He finally came staggering out of the forest, dehydrated and near starved, babbling something about his “new found land”. After he was cleaned up, fed and well recovered he began to tell a story that set the town abuzz and sent the Colonel rushing to his bedside.
It seems John thought he had gone so far up into the mountains that no other human could have been there. As he was walking along with his head in the clouds, marveling at all that lay before him, the ground gave way under his feet. He estimated he fell about twenty feet and was knocked cold. When he awoke, he saw stars of course, but then he saw diamonds, black diamonds, or as we all know it, coal.
The Colonel excitedly assembled a survey team and they, the Colonel and several other well armed “lawmen” headed out to see if they could find out just where Mr. Wraungway had been.
It turns out, John really had not ventured very far from the furthest flung logging camp at all although he had accidentally gone into a part of the forest that almost everyone was afraid to go because it was said to be haunted and occupied by outlaws, or as they were called in these parts, Banditos. The Colonel had sought to log it but had yet to find anyone brave enough to venture in and his wife had steadfastly refused to let him go in on his own. John, in his bumbling, stumbling way, changed all that. A range war was fought, the Banditos were driven further up into the vast reaches of the Sighattica's and then a mine tipple was hastily built. Coal and logs have been coming down from the mountains ever since. The ongoing prosperity of the little railroad was assured and a full fledged engine service terminal was built complete with turntable and a small three stall enginehouse. The Colonel dubbed the terminal “Westcott” after some famous publishing baron he had read about and admired. As for Mr. Wraungway, he has retired from the exploring business and lives on and farms the large acreage the Colonel gave him in appreciation for his miraculous find. Word is his wife and kids have now dubbed the estate, “Newfoundland”.
It is here, on a bright and chilly early spring morning from the overlook of the Colonel's fine mountain house that we look in on the little line. It's still cold enough out that we can see our breath in front of us and the steam rises off the coffee and hot cocoa that our hostess, Mrs. Mariah Arthur has so graciously made for us. As we smell the gentle apple and cinnamon aroma from the pies she already has in the wood fired oven, we can see #1, a Mogul, just being pulled out of the roundhouse and onto the turntable to be prepped for another days work. The Climax logging loco, old #4 is already out and about and headed up the switchback grade where she will spend her day hauling both lumber and coal out of the mountains. A breeze wafts gently off the small lake at the bottom of McClannahan Gorge. We catch a slight chill and turn our collars up upon our neck. The lake is formed by the dam built to run the waterwheel at Bishop Brothers Mill. If we strain we can here the steady trickle of water and the occasional creaking of the wheel. Mount Allen looms in the distance, towering above everything around it. It reaches so high into the clouds that we can't see the top. It seems other worldly, almost ominous. The blackened remnants of a forest fire upon it's face, one that threatened to take the whole mountain, only reinforces the feeling. We find ourselves lost in the beauty and grandeur of natures finest work, lightly peppered with the trappings of man and the steel ribbons of rail seemingly reaching out everywhere. We feel as if we're almost in a dream and the melodic whistle of #1 wakes us as she pulls off the turntable. Then, #4 seems to answer her call in the distance. A symphony of great and powerful machines. Art, in the mediums of iron, fire and steam. Are they alive? They almost seem to be. The “real” world seems so far away. Why would anyone ever want to leave here?
A romantic vision of what might have been? What could have been? Please, join me...
Michael, A.R.S. W4HIJ
Model Rail, electronics experimenter and "mad scientist" for over 50 years.
Member of "The Amigos" and staunch disciple of the "Wizard of Monterey"
My Pike: The Blackwater Island Logging&Mining Co.
