They want the EPA to regulate the coal dust that comes off trains. Coal-hauling railroads, including Norfolk Southern and CSX, would be required to seek permits under the Clean Water Act.
The landmark law has never been applied to transporting coal by rail. Railroads have been transporting coal in open-top cars for more than a century. Some treat coal loads with chemical compounds to prevent dust from blowing off.
Coal dust and particles can contaminate drinking water and aquatic life, the groups say.
They also say the dust can pollute the air, increasing the risk of asthma, bronchitis and heart disease.
In 2019, the Association of American Railroads, the industry’s principal lobbying group, anticipating potential regulatory action, filed a petition with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to exempt coal dust from trains from the Clean Water Act.
The following year, the agency declined to grant the exemption.
The Appalachian & Ohio Railroad and the Kanawha River Railroad will receive as much as $16 million and $19 million, respectively.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is giving two West Virginia shortline railroads money for improvements.
The Appalachian & Ohio Railroad and the Kanawha River Railroad will receive as much as $16 million and $19 million, respectively.
That’s from the Federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement Program, made possible by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.
The two railroads will use the money to rehabilitate track, locomotives, bridges and tunnels.
The Appalachian & Ohio operates 158 miles of track between Grafton and Cowen and hauls primarily coal. It interchanges with CSX.
The Kanawha River Railroad operates 385 miles of track from Columbus, Ohio, to Elmore, West Virginia, and hauls coal, chemicals, cement, aggregates and metals. It interchanges with Norfolk Southern and CSX.
Sometime in the 1970s, a group of model railroad enthusiasts in Charleston, West Virginia started getting together at the local Presbyterian Church to talk trains. As the club grew they found a bigger space where they could set up little dioramas for their engines and cars to traverse.
This story originally aired in the Feb. 17, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Sometime in the 1970s, a group of model railroad enthusiasts in Charleston, West Virginia started getting together at the local Presbyterian Church to talk trains. As the club grew, they found a bigger space where they could set up little dioramas for their engines and cars to traverse.
Then, in 1998, the Kanawha Valley Railroad Association got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The county commission gave them some money to build a brick-and-mortar clubhouse. Members decided to use the new space to build one big, permanent model train layout.
So, like the steel driving men who once tamed the West Virginia mountainsides, they set to work. They built huge tables where they laid track and wired it up to electricity. They crafted rock outcroppings from stacks of ceiling tiles that they roughed up with wire brushes — though sometimes they’d just find a nice looking rock outside and add it to the layout. They built houses and businesses and barns, coal tipples and a replica of the Hawk’s Nest Dam. They made thousands of trees from white poly fiber stuffing that they dipped in watered-down school glue and rolled around in ground-up green foam.
The Kanawha Valley Railroad Association built huge tables where they laid track and wired it up to electricity. Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Completing the layout took thousands of hours over about five years. But in the end, the club filled in the space, wall-to-wall, with the communities of Charleston, Elkview and Thurmond all at one-87ths scale.
And you can see it — just stop by the Kanawha Valley Railroad Association’s headquarters in Charleston’s Coonskin Park, any Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is free, though donations are appreciated.
“It’s not only for us to enjoy but it’s for the community to enjoy,” member Anthony Parrish said. “Not everybody can have one of these in their basement.”
Club members have created a little game for visitors to help them fully experience the layout in all its detailed complexity.
“We have a ‘see if you can find it’ sheet that we give our visitors,” said Parrish, who helped build the layout. “There’s one scene here where there’s an old moonshine still located in the forest, in an area you wouldn’t think to look for a moonshine still. There’s rock climbers and stuff [and] a barber shop.”
Look really closely, and you start to notice something besides those Easter eggs. Is that a ‘57 Chevy crossing the Southside Bridge in Charleston? There’s the Kanawha County Courthouse on the boulevard — but where are the high rise office buildings or Haddad Riverfront Park?
This model doesn’t only capture the landscape of southern West Virginia. It captures a moment in time: a single sunny summer afternoon in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The club’s old-timers did the majority of the work on the model, and this was a way of remembering and reliving a bit of their youth.
Club members have created a little game for visitors to help them fully experience the layout in all its detailed complexity. Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
But that doesn’t mean the club is stuck in the past. As you stand there, marveling at the West Virginia of yesteryear — along comes a Northfolk Southern diesel locomotive, just like the ones you might see chugging down the tracks today. It belongs to Austin West. At 15, he’s one of the group’s youngest members.
“The engines I have are ones that’s actually been in my backyard that I’ve seen,” West said. “I was like ‘I want to have that.’ And now I can.”
West doesn’t have a layout at home, so the model at the clubhouse gives him somewhere to run his trains. The club also has train cars and digital controllers that members can borrow, greatly reducing the barrier of entry for what can be a pretty expensive hobby.
But that’s not the only benefit newcomers like West get from their membership dues. He’s learned a lot from the more experienced members. Once you really get into it, it’s not enough to collect locomotives and railcars — you’ve got to modify them.
“The cars are mostly dirty and patched. And the front engine is supposed to look like it caught on fire, like the real thing,” West said.
While West prefers modern trains, his buddy Joesph Watson is focused on the Norfolk and Western railroad — trains that disappeared 20 years before he was born. He has diesel and steam locomotives from the N&W line, which he’s weathered with paint and special chalks using techniques he’s learned from other members.
“It’s all about making it look real,” Watson said. “Everybody here does it different. Get those different opinions and add it into what you do, and it makes your own style on how you model.”
It has enabled Watson to recreate something he never saw in real life. He’s 20 and the N&W went away in 1982, when it merged with Southern Railways to become Northfolk Southern.
“It makes you look back on, how would these be back in the day?” he said. “What would it be like to stand on the side of a railroad in the 1930s and see these coming down the tracks?”
And there are his trains, clacking right past Austin’s modern Northfolk Southern locomotives, in this snapshot of midcentury West Virginia. The past and present of American rail transit, alive on a small scale.
Completing the layout took thousands of hours over about five years. But in the end, the club filled in the space, wall-to-wall, with the communities of Charleston, Elkview and Thurmond all at one-87ths scale. Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The future, though, is less certain.
Yeager International Airport sits just up the hill from Charleston’s Coonskin Park. And a proposed multi-million dollar expansion of the runway there would require a whole section of park to be filled in with dirt — right where the clubhouse sits.
The building isn’t doomed just yet. The Federal Aviation Administration is still studying the project. But the train club has already started looking for new potential locations.
Member Mike Reynolds said any move will mean the end of their gigantic model of southern West Virginia rail lines.
“This was built to be permanent, so it would be really hard to break it up,” Reynolds said. “And whatever we take will be partially destroyed in the process and have to be redone. But we don’t know where we’re going to, so we don’t know how much room we’ll have. If any.”
It’s a little ironic. The very mode of transportation that supplanted trains as Americans’ go-to mode of cross-country travel now threatens to take away a place where that history is celebrated.
But while club members are concerned about the future of their building and layout, no one seems too worried about the future of the club. New train fanatics are being born every day.
“I’ve got a grandson that’s 3 years old. And from the day he had any idea what was going on, he has wanted to fool with trains,” Reynolds said. “It’s almost like a fox knows how to hunt. They already know what trains are all about.”
“I think it’s magic,” he said. “I do. I think it’s magic.”
The Kanawha Valley Railroad Association will also host its 17th annual Model Train and Craft Show at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center on March 11 and 12. You can find more about it on their Facebook page.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
The Senate also voted Thursday to prevent railroad workers from striking.
U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito voted against paid sick leave for railroad workers on Thursday. It did not get the 60 votes it needed for approval in the chamber.
That means Congress will order railroad workers to accept a contract negotiated by labor leaders and the White House. The contract does not include the paid sick days they sought.
Speaking with West Virginia reporters earlier Thursday, Capito said she understands where the workers are coming from.
“And so I think their voices do need to be heard,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s the Senate’s role or the Congress’ role to negotiate these contracts.”
Capito said labor leaders should negotiate the terms directly with the railroad companies.
Some Republicans joined most Democrats to vote in favor of paid sick leave. Manchin was the only Democrat to vote no.
“While I am sympathetic to the concerns union members have raised,” Manchin said in a statement, “I do not believe it is the role of Congress to renegotiate a collective bargaining agreement that has already been negotiated.”
The Senate also voted Thursday to prevent railroad workers from striking. The measure now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
Pending the contract’s final approval, rail workers won the right to attend appointments like doctors’ visits and family emergencies without punishment from their employers. Workers will also earn a 24 percent wage increase through 2024.
Rail companies and union leaders reached a tentative agreement Thursday preventing a nationwide strike.
Pending the contract’s final approval, rail workers won the right to attend appointments like doctors’ visits and family emergencies without punishment from their employers. Workers will also earn a 24 percent wage increase through 2024.
Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement following the agreement, “Collective bargaining works. The labor movement works. And we know through lifetimes of experience and unbelievable sacrifice, Teamsters across America’s railroads work harder than anyone.”
Maryland Area Regional Commuter (MARC) trains run by the Maryland Department of Transportation faced suspension due to the labor conflict. MARC trains that run from Martinsburg into Washington, D.C. run on tracks owned by CSX Transportation.
Long-haul Amtrak trains across the U.S. were previously suspended in anticipation of the potential strike. These include the Capitol Limited, which stops in Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, and Cardinal, which stops in the New River Gorge, Charleston and Huntington.
“This tentative agreement will keep our trains moving, stations bustling, and employees proudly serving customers as we move them across this great country,” Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner said in a statement.
An advisory notice by Amtrak says they are “working to quickly restore canceled trains and reaching out directly to impacted customers.”
