Kessler & Northern District - Progress and History

On the evening of June 4, 2010, I managed to lay another 10 feet or so of K&N District branch trackage from Raders Jct, WV, to a point just south of Kessler, WV.  For those who know the layout better, that is the track on the shelf directly in front of the Charleston staging yard.

Cork roadbed is in place for the K&N mainline, passing siding, and wye connection to the Clear Fork loader that will be located on a hidden staging track.  Track progress should continue through that area this weekend.

I've been thinking about the fictional history of the K&N, and most about why the Kessler and NORTHERN Railroad would have extended both north and south of Kessler, WV.  I've pieced together a draft of the history of the railroad, without dates as of yet, so I can have an idea of what happened to create this coal branch district of the CR&E.

The Kessler & Northern Railroad was chartered by the Kessler Smokeless Coal Company to move coal out of the Kessler, WV, area north to a connection with the Baltimore & Ohio at Fenwick, WV.   The B&O's Richwood Subdivision extending south from the Cowen, WV, area, would serve as the outlet for K&N coal.

Eventually the coal company came on hard times and the railroad was on the verge of bankruptcy.  The company made efforts to encourage the B&O to take control of the K&N, but the B&O did not have any interest in taking over K&N operations.   The coal company itself went out of business and mines in the area were idled.

Later, a new operator took over the mines in the Kessler area and other operators had interest in mining coal both north and south of Kessler.  The B&O, now under Chessie System, still had little interest in reviving the old railroad and was in fact considering the shutdown of its low volume operations on the Richwood Subdivision.  Desperate for an outlet for the coal, and without the money to return the railroad to service, the coal companies in the area lobbied for another buyer.

Enter the Charleston, Roanoke, & Eastern Railway, a railroad serving as a bridge route and coal hauler between Charleston, WV, and Danville, VA.  Long operated by a joint agreement between the Norfolk & Western and the Southern Railway, yet maintaining its own identity, the CR&E became interested in accessing the coal fields around Kessler.  Their mainline came within a few miles of the K&N as it passed through Meadow Bluff, WV, in Greenbrier County.  The CR&E already served a couple of smaller loaders in that area.

The CR&E built a connection from Meadow Bluff to Kessler, referred to as the K&N Extension, in order to access the Kessler & Northern Railroad.  A small yard was built at Meadow Bluff for the storage of loaded and empty coal hoppers for the branch.  The branch joined the CR&E mainline at K&N Junction, where KN Tower was built to handle the coal marshalling duties.

The CR&E's new connection ran through Crawley and Shawvers Crossing (Raders Jct), WV, where the railroad crossed the Nicholas, Fayette & Greenbrier (a joint C&O/NYC operation that later became a joint CSXT/Conrail operation).  A new loadout was eventually built at Crawley.

The railroad followed Big Clear Creek all the way to the connection with the original K&N mainline at Kessler.  A connection track was built at Kessler to form a wye where the CR&E's K&N Extension connected to the K&N's line toward Clear Fork Mine. 

The Clear Fork loadier was completely rebuilt as a flood-loading operation shipping coal south to the CR&E and also back north to the Chessie System, later CSXT, which suddenly had become interested in the line again after access had been built to the Norfolk Southern-controlled CR&E. 

In the CR&E's early 1990's timeframe, most coal on the K&N travels south to the NS/CR&E connection at Meadow Bluff.  Some coal, however, moves north from Clear Fork to the CSXT/B&O Richwood Subdivision and on to Cowen, WV.  Occasional NF&G loads from Raders Run, Anjean, and Clearco also move north to the B&O via connections with the K&N District both north and south of Kessler.

The Kessler & Northern Railroad is now operated as the Kessler & Northern District of the CR&E Division of Norfolk Southern.   And that, in my world, is how the K&N came to be.