The Elusive "WB," West Roanoke -- FOUND !

[NW Mailing List]

Very nice research, Abe. I’ve also started poking around those ROW maps. I bought a couple of maps from the archives that cover my primary town of interest (Circleville), but I didn’t have one for the coaling station just south of town (Dorney). Now I do.  

For anyone who lost track of the link posted by the very same Abe back in April, it is here:

https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/1501567?page=2

Unlike the Abe’s experience, on the Scioto Division (a least in Ohio), North is to the right. An easier thing to wrap your head around than North being down!

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio.

> On Jul 5, 2025, at 3:31 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> “WB” is a name which has been in the N&W vocabulary for over a hundred years.  For 66 years of those years, I have looked for its exact location, without resolution.  The older men who were still working when I hired (1964) remembered the place, but could not give an accurate location.
> 
> The original WB was a telegraph office at the west end of Roanoke Yard, somewhere near the connection with the west end of the Roanoke Belt Line.  My guess is that WB functioned as a Train Order office (that’s what almost all “telegraph offices” did on the N&W.)  But exactly where this facility was located, has heretofore not been determined.   And it may have been moved westwardly, as the yard was extended.
> 
> Thanks to Mr. Miller’s masterful Excel file, drenched with the sweat of midnight oil and cataloging the appearance, and the disappearance, of locations from Radford Division Time Tables, we know that WB first appeared in the Time Table of Jan 4, 1917 under the name West Belt Line Jct.  West Belt Line Jct makes its last appearance in Time Table No. 16 of May 29, 1921, after which date the name is changed to WB, and it is apparently no longer a Train Order Office.
> 
> But now, thanks to the posting of the N&W Valuation Maps  by the National Archives & Records Administration, we have the answer !   N&W Valuation Map, section, Sheet 20, dated June 30, 1916 (but probably submitted several years after that date,) at a scale of 1” to 100’, shows a structure, designated as a Telegraph Office at the requisite location.  The surveyors noted their measurements to the foot, and sometimes to the 0.5 foot.  Doing a lot of manipulation with seven-digit footage measurement numbers ("the Plusses," in surveyor's lingo,)  we can determine that the centerline of the building at WB stood 4731 feet west of the centerline of the culvert carrying Peters Creek under the railroad, and 5430 feet east of the centerline of the bridge over Mason’s Creek.  The eastbound Yard Limit Board stood on the opposite of the tracks from WB and 682 feet to the west.
> 
> Using our age’s greatest earth referencing system, approximate coordinates would be  37.2726, -80.0088 .  Paste these coordinates into the Google Maps search box and you will be taken to the approximate location where  WB Telegraph office stood on the north side of the Westbound Main Line.  My guess is that they bring us within a hundred feet of the old structure’s location.  (The wild card, of course, is that the railroad has been widened from 3 tracks to 14 tracks at this point, but I think most of the widening was done by shifting the channel of the river southward and filling in to the south of the original roadbed.)
> 
> To make this easier, stand on the centerline of the present Peters Creek Road bridge over the railroad, between Roanoke and Salem, and look westward 348 feet… WB stood on the north side of the trackage.  Expressed another way, WB stood 1500 feet east of the westbound home signal bridge at present WB Interlocking.
> 
> The Val map also gives a clue as to WB’s function.  The tower stood at the west end of a pull out track which lay between the two Main tracks and extended eastwardly about 4000 feet, to the west end of the yard.  This pull out track connected to the Westbound Main track at WB.   WB obviously handled this switch, but whether by hand or by interlocking, the Val map gives us no indication.  To the west of the tower was a trailing point crossover between the two Main tracks which may, or may not, have been handled by the Operator at WB.  Also, it would be logical to use an office at that location for Clearance Cards and Train Orders for westbound trains departing the yard.  One guesses that WB did not serve as a Block Station for the blocking of trains, as the N&W had installed automatic block signals (semaphores) on the Main Line beginning in 1906, and we have no evidence  that trains were ever blocked on the Roanoke Belt Line.
> 
> Attached is an edited screenshot of a small portion of the map, showing WB Telegraph Office.  Don’t be spooked by the lettering “F.C. Board.”   That is a landowner’s name, not the designation of some railroad artifact.  CAVEAT:  On the N&W Vals, North is down and South is up.  Why would anybody in the Northern Hemisphere do a map in that orientation ... ?
> 
> So, I am satisfied that I have found WB.  Hopefully you will be satisfied with the reasoning and the explanation, too. 
> 
> Now, where is a photograph of WB?  It is likely that the Valuation Inventory team photographed the structure.  The Venerable Bill Harman, of Christiansburg, told me he had seen a photograph of the place and recalled it as a “fairly large structure” (i.e. not just a railroad shanty,) so we know it was photographed at least once.
> 
>  -- abram burnett,
> 
> Intercontinental Ballistic Turnips, LLC
> 
> . 
> 
> <N&W WB Telegraph Office west of Roanoke _ Valuation Map Sect 10, Sheet 20.jpg>________________________________________
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