Saturday Railfanning in Kenova, West Virginia, at the Crossing of the N&W and the C&O.

Hello everyone! I'd like to start off with giving a big shoutout to a couple of cool railfans I met on this day: Austin the West Virginia Railfan and Dax Main Line Railfanning. Austin and Dax are a pair of local railfans from the Kenova region and both have pretty good YouTube channels. If you have not heard of them before, I strongly encourage you to check out their respective channels and feel free to watch their video content from our day of railfanning together. Here are their channels:

Austin the West Virginia Railfan:    / @wvrails10  

Dax Main Line Railfanning:    / @rrs1997  

On this day of railfanning, I ventured to Kenova, West Virginia for the first time in nearly a year. Kenova is best known as the historic crossing of the two major coal-hauling railroads of West Virginia: The Norfolk and Western (the N&W) and The Chesapeake and Ohio (the C&O). Both mainlines of the two historic railroads still see coal trains, but more importantly, a greater variety of manifest and other unit trains on their respective routes. Though the day was cold and the action a bit slow at times, it was one of the more exciting and intriguing days of railfanning I've had thanks to the other railfans I met that day.

As I mentioned, Austin and Dax are both local railfans of the region, and as fate would have it, both have seen my first Kenova Railfanning video. Between the three of us railfans, we had a good day of watching the trains, one filled with some great catches. Shortly after both arrived, the action picked up and it started with a bang. We caught the Pennsylvania Heritage Unit NS 8102 leading manifest train 393 with DPU power in the middle, a great first through train of the day. Following 393 both railroads treated us to some local action before NS intermodal train 234 came through. Norfolk Southern over the years has slowly but surely transformed the former coal-hauling N&W mainline into an intermodal corridor between Tidewater Virginia and the Great Lakes. The Norfolk and Western mainline is now part of what's known as the "Heartland Corridor" and has seen increasingly longer and more frequent intermodal action, thus the length of train 234.

After 234 came through, CSX treated us with a couple of manifest trains, first with Q317 and then H758. Q317 is the daily westbound manifest from Cumberland, Maryland, to Cincinnati and travels along the route of the original Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) west of Cumberland and connects to the C&O mainline in Huntington. H758 is a brand-new train and the replacement/successor train to manifest train H750. In January 2022, CSX made a significant change to train traffic along it's mainline through West Virginia when they abolished the mega-manifests H750 and H751 and opted for the shorter but more manageable H758 and H759. In simpler language, CSX cut the route of H750 in half, as H750 would travel from Russell, Kentucky, to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Now, the "new" H750 (H758) now stops in Clifton Forge, Virginia. Even though the train number and the train route has changed, the good news is this is still a daily train in the region, and H758 was a quite a sight on this day. The lead unit was CSX 8907, one of just 10 Tier-4 ACe units on the CSX system, and the train featured quite a variety of unusual rolling stock. The front of the train had maintenance-of-way equipment comprised of old gondola cars, and the train even featured a DDOX (U.S. Department of Defense) flatcar near the end of the train. Not sure what was on the DDOX flatcar but it looked rather interesting.

Following the pair of CSX manifests, Norfolk Southern sent two more of its daily through trains; a regular coal train and westbound intermodal train 233, the counterpart of train 234. Interestingly, the coal train featured a rear-DPU likely because it was a loaded coal train. After train 233 passed through, CSX treated us to a pair of westbound unit trains with an impressive display of power, first a grain train and then a coal train. Both types of unit trains are quite common on this CSX line, but surprisingly were the only two unit trains on this day of railfanning. The day concluded with the NS local coming back from it's daily run to the Kenova industries.

Though the traffic was a bit slower on this day of railfanning, I still had a great day all around with Austin and Dax. We had a great time filming the trains and exploring the area where the Kenova train station used to stand. Believe it or not, the station used to stand right at the bridge crossing, but has been long-gone since the 1970s. Before I conclude, we met a third railfan on this day, GMTX 2613. He's from Lexington, Kentucky, and does a good bit of Kentucky railfanning on the NS Rathole Line. Check him out!

GMTX 2613:    / @gmtx-kg8ep  

Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!

-N&W475