July 2018 Article

This Month's Article - July 2018

Tracing Nelson & Albemarle Railway Vulcan Locomotives

The Nelson & Albemarle Railway was a subsidiary of the Soapstone company that provided most locomotives either directly or by lease for their use. The Soapstone business was either feast or famine when it came to supporting their railroad. Sales could be hot and heavy with money flowing well, allowing the purchase of new locomotives. Or times could be tough, barely permitting any locomotive purchase and even then, only if used or discounted in price. Reselling locomotives that were no longer needed also provided some limited income during financial struggles. Along the timeline of the Nelson & Albemarle Railway there came a year when mechanical needs for keeping locomotives operating caused them to seek out a master mechanic to care for their locomotives. By hiring that mechanic away from a locomotive manufacturer, a particular discipline was instilled in the railway. A significant part of that discipline was selecting Vulcan Locomotive Works products from the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania manufacturer as the locomotive of choice. Costs were also reduced by limiting the spare parts needing to be maintained. While there were many locomotive manufacturers in the United States during the early part of that century, Vulcan was well known for it's small, but reliable line of locomotives that could be tailored for specific use. Vulcan locomotives arriving on the Soapstone company property included two purchased new for the Old Dominion Soapstone Corporation and four purchased new for the N&A (#9, #10, #12, and #14). A secondhand locomotive arrived from previous owner Culver & Port Clinton Railroad that had supported Gypsum mining in Ohio by Lake Erie becoming N&A #11. And in a strange purchase, a locomotive built for the Chile Exploration Company of Chile ended up not being taken and was resold to the Alberoyd Company of Esmont, Virginia as their #1 locomotive. This part of company history is interesting in itself, but the end result was the absorbing of that endeavor into the Soapstone company's larger enterprise and the locomotive came to the Virginia Alberene in March of 1928 becoming N&A #15. Trying to find information on these N&A locomotives led to a prepared list of all Vulcan locomotives produced but one that was static and not searchable. Four months were spent preparing a new searchable spreadsheet format for the data and a sample of some of the items found is shown here. Being able to search is a distinct advantage for research into any of the railroads purchasing from Vulcan Locomotive Works.

Send email to NelsonAlbemarle@comcast.net if you have any comments or questions or wish to contribute to future articles. We continue to look for diagrams of the railway track at Rockfish for our Nelson & Albemarle Railway map. If you have something to share, please write to us at the email address above. Copyright 2018 - Nelson & Albemarle Railway Historical Society.