March-April 2014 Article

This Month's Article: March/April 2014

The Story of N&A #3 Diesel

It was inevitable that the Nelson & Albemarle Railway would have diesels operating trains if they were to survive into the modern post-war (WWII) era. Steam locomotives (and replacement parts) were expensive to maintain and the locomotives most relied upon for daily service were approaching 50 years of age. Locomotives #9 and #10 were replaced by a General Electric 44-ton diesel (c/n 30856) built in December 1950 for Alberene Stone Company under requisition #RIC-29947 though lettered for the Nelson & Albemarle Railway as #1. It shipped from GE's Erie, Pennsylvania factory on 9 January 1951 and was likely received by mid-January. The Nelson & Albemarle Railway had acquired it's first diesel and the days were numbered for the remainder of the steam locomotives serving the quarry and Schuyler mill operations. Locomotives #11, #12, #14, and #15 were next in line for replacement. Diesel #1 had replaced main line interchange service with the C&O and now a single General Electric 35-ton diesel (c/n 31768) bought on requisition #RIC-49116-2 would be serving the Schuyler mill having been built in November 1952 and shipped on 5 December 1952. While N&A #1 was utilized for quite some time in a second life with TTX (nee Hamburg Industries) in North Augusta, South Carolina (formerly Hamburg, South Carolina) it became a parts unit with the acquisition by TTX and would eventually be sent for formal scrapping with Progress Rail according to TTX sources. N&A #2, the rare 35-ton unit, still lives on supporting rail operations for the French company, Imerys, Inc., at their facility in Sylacauga, Alabama where the unit was sent when the N&A shut down in 1963 (Alabama Marble at the time, a subsidiary of Georgia Marble that owned the Virginia soapstone works). But it's Diesel #3 of the Nelson & Albemarle Railway that disappeared and eluded tracking until just recently and it is this story that we're telling now.

Life started for the General Electric 25-ton B-diesel as construction number 31778 in January 1953. Alberene Stone Company ordered the diesle under requisition #RIC-49116-3 and the unit was shipped to Schuyler, Virginia as Alberene Stone Corporation of Virginia No. 3 on 6 February 1953 from GE's Erie plant. <PENNSYLVANIA> The dimunitive 4-wheel diesel would operate on the soapstone companies trackage at quarries in Schuyler. <VIRGINIA> Much like the 35-ton #2, this unit was owned by the company, but leased to the Nelson & Albermarle Railway for car movement at the quarries and mill. Locomotives #11, #12, #14, and #15 would soon be off the property and scrapped during 1953 (likely at Peck Iron & Metal in Richmond, Virginia as the C&O and other Virginia rail lines utilized this scrap dealer heavily during the 1950's). Daily operations would have been rather simple, moving loaded flat cars of soapstone block to be hoisted off the car and moved to the mill or gang-saw building by overhead crane. This would carry on for 10 years until the N&A, weary and tired, would cease operations and rail operations shifted to trucking including moving what soapstone blocks were quarried to the nearby mill. It's unfortunate that from those 10 years, there has not emerged any photograph of this unit in the Alberene Stone Corporation paint/lettering scheme. N&A #3 would make it's way to Georgia Marble's facility at Nelson, Georgia in 1963. <GEORGIA> <