Virgie Bailey Interview

Virgie Bailey by Steven Black

"The railroad that ran from Narrows to Suiter it was the Norfolk and Western railroad.  The railroad pretty much followed Wolfe Creek to Hunting Camp.  They started building the railroad in 1900 and it was finished until 1918 or 19 somewhere along or 17.  Well wait no it was September 10th, 1914.  It hauled Mostly timber products, logs, boards, and uh....I can’t think what the other one was.  Tanbark or anything that was a byproduct of a tree.  I don’t remember them shipping their livestock on it but I’d say they did before I can remember, for that was the only way they had to get anything out of here because they didn’t have any trucks and things to do things with. It had several stops.  It stopped down at number 2 bridge and Penver and they caught it down there at French’s somewhere and then it stopped up here at Niday and Roundbottom, that’s where they took on water at Round Bottom and Rocky Gap and then at Suiter and I’d say they had some between ...probably at Hicksville, I don’t know but I’d say at Hicksville.  Everybody rode the train back then. I went to the doctor many times, in Rocky Gap, on the train.  Around the Fourth of July you could hardly find a seat on the train. it went up and back, up to Suiter and back, three times a week.  And there were a lot of off settings that people could get cars on there, and then load them, and they would pick them up as they went back down.  They called them sidings at that time.  You could hear the whistle coming from way down the valley.  The train traveled very slow.  I rode it to narrows to Chapel a few times.  The car you rode in was a passenger car, like you see on the trains today.  Those red caboose, well they ain’t cabooses, but, uh, Pullman cars.  They had one on this one up through here.  One Pullman car. anybody that wanted to go anywhere.  They would go visit their friends.  It would go up in the morning around  9 o’clock, and it would come back about 3 every evening.  If you wanted to go visit your friend, and come back on the train.  So there were a lot of people that went to visit people, or visit the sick, or see the doctor, buy groceries, or different things.  There were a lot of people that rode the train.  It was about the only transportation we had, back in the 30s. They had a pot-bellied stove in it in the winter time.  And it was hot in the summer, for you had your windows open all the time. I never remember any accidents of the train derailing but they would be rocks and things roll off the cliffs and they would have to stop and but mostly when the train run they was a trolley car that went in front of it and if there was anything an obstacle in the road they would go back and stop the train before they got to it so I don’t remember any accidents but there could have been some, but I don’t remember any.  A cowcatcher is a big thing in front of the train that looks like a mesh. I mean its made out of steel but it has bars and everything but it looks like mesh..like a fence, it has bars in it about the size of your finger and they called it a cowcatcher. Elmer Bailey, Paul Clark, and Bill Saunders was going to work and the water was up and they was taking a car around this cliff down here by putting one board on the outside of the rail and a board in the middle and they was going down the track and here come the train and Mr. Coburn said that was the first time in 40 years of railroading that he had ever seen anything like that.  They backed the train up so they could get their car off the track.  The railroad left the area because there wasn’t enough stuff being shipped on the train.  There wasn’t nothing to ship out up here, they had took all the timber and the byproducts and there wasn’t anybody to...wasn’t enough to be shipped out.  It was just running for the mail and that was all.  The mail couldn’t afford it, I don’t guess, to keep it running. it was fun to ride.  It was nostalgic, or what you want to call it, to ride something like that.  I think you’ll remember it the rest of your life.  I know I’ll remember it as long as my mind is what it is.  It was fun and the conductors were nice to you and everything.  That made it more enjoyable.  And the people that had never been up through here before, or down through here, the conductor would point out where they were at and everything.  We didn’t have no real scenery, I mean great things going on through here, but they still pointed out where they were at, and the churches, and where the post offices were at, and the stores, things like that down through here."