<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">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. <div><br></div><div>For anyone who lost track of the link posted by the very same Abe back in April, it is here:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/1501567?page=2">https://catalog.archives.gov/search-within/1501567?page=2</a><br id="lineBreakAtBeginningOfMessage"><div><br></div><div>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!</div><div><br></div><div>Matt Goodman</div><div>Columbus, Ohio.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Jul 5, 2025, at 3:31 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list@nwhs.org> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">“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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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. <span style="font-size:11pt">The eastbound Yard Limit Board stood on the opposite of the
tracks from WB and 682 feet to the west.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.)</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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 ... ?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">So, I am satisfied that I have found WB. Hopefully you will be satisfied with the reasoning and the explanation, too. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""> -- abram burnett,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif""><span style="font-size:11pt">Intercontinental Ballistic Turnips, LLC</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 10pt;line-height:115%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,"sans-serif"">. <br></p></div>
<span id="cid:f_mcqm0jtl0"><N&W WB Telegraph Office west of Roanoke _ Valuation Map Sect 10, Sheet 20.jpg></span>________________________________________<br>NW-Mailing-List@nwhs.org<br>To change your subscription go to<br>https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list<br>Browse the NW-Mailing-List archives at<br>https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>