St. Charles Branch, WV--19' x 33' Track Plan

Scale: HO
Minimum Radius: 30" (24" in helix to Monarch)
Minimum Aisle Width: 30"

This layout represents the Southern's St. Charles branch from Pocket, VA up through St. Charles and out four different branches to the mines.   This layout was drawn mostly from topo maps, so the actual track layouts at the various tipples may not be very accurate (any additional information would be greatly appreciated).

The neat thing about the St. Charles Branch is that the Southern owned it, but the L&N (and the CSX today) had trackage rights over the entire branch.  It appears that a Southern mine run was operated out of St. Charles (two mine runs in the 70s) and served all of the mines up the branchlines.  The coal would then be moved south through Pocket and over to the yard at Appalachia (later Andover), VA.   The L&N accessed the line via a short connection from Pennington, VA to Pocket and served a few of the mines before returning to Pennington.  In the steam era, an L&N crew was stationed at Pennington to work the St. Charles branch, but as times got lean, this work was turned over to the CV local.  In addition to the mine runs, unit trains also loaded on the St. Charles Branch and continue to load today. 

Lower Deck

Upper  Deck

Operations on this layout would be comprised of one or two Southern mine runs working the branches, and a daily L&N train to work the loaders they had cars at.  There might also be a daily train or two from Appalachia/Andover to supply St. Charles with empties and to retrieve the loads.  In the 70s and beyond, there would be at least one unit train loading on the branch daily (not sure where).  All of this could definitely keep 2 or 3 operators busy for a few hours.