Roanoke Chapter NRHS

Roanoke Chapter NRHS The Roanoke Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society preserves and educates the public about the rail history of southwest Virginia.

The Roanoke Chapter NRHS is a not-for-profit, historical and educational organization incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia and recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501 (c)(3) organization

We have been involved in the preservation and dissemination of western Virginia’s rail heritage, most specifically the Norfolk and Western and Virginian Railways. Our organization is quite active in the preservation and restoration of historical rail equipment, documentation and structures relating to the railroads in our area for the past 55 years. Western Virginia has an interesting rail heritage, you can experience some of it here, and there are a variety of ways to also participate. The Mechanical Department of the Roanoke Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society maintains and restores the chapter's collection of historic rolling stock. This includes our two operating locomotives as well as passenger and freight equipment. We meet at the chapter's yard in southeast Roanoke on Saturdays (and some other days) to work. We also assist with other railway preservation projects in the Roanoke area. If you'd like to visit or help out, send us a message for directions. No particular skills are required.

09/26/2026

Driving one of the cable anchors into the hillside using the gas-powered hammer. Once it's driven several feet into the ground, the driving bar is removed, and the cable is tensioned, which anchors the fabric tightly to the hillside.

This weekend, we started working on installing the geotech fabric that will keep the hillside stable. The ground gets s...
09/26/2026

This weekend, we started working on installing the geotech fabric that will keep the hillside stable. The ground gets smoothed and raked, grass seed applied, and then the fabric is rolled out. Anchors are then driven through the fabric several feet into the dirt to hold it in place. We also continued working on grading the other end of the hillside in order to make it ready to apply the fabric there.

Today, several of us worked on cleaning out the track truck since we've finished the project taking up the track and swi...
09/20/2026

Today, several of us worked on cleaning out the track truck since we've finished the project taking up the track and switch on a neighbor's property. The remaining tie plates were unloaded, and the dirt and foundry sand were washed out of the bed and off the roof of the truck. We also started sorting and stacking the joint bars, tie plates, specialty switch plates, and other materials.

Work continues at the northwest edge of the yard to slope the hillside and prepare it for the geotech fabric to be insta...
09/19/2026

Work continues at the northwest edge of the yard to slope the hillside and prepare it for the geotech fabric to be installed.

We made our last trip up to the home of one of our members who left us his shop and farm equipment today. Our last rema...
09/12/2026

We made our last trip up to the home of one of our members who left us his shop and farm equipment today. Our last remaining task there was to collect some standing seam terne metal roofing from a collapsed farm building, which we will make use of on a couple of upcoming projects.

The cleanup project along the northwest edge of our yard has officially reached a new stage. This weekend, we finished ...
09/08/2026

The cleanup project along the northwest edge of our yard has officially reached a new stage. This weekend, we finished removing the last of the junk and old scrap on the hillside. This project will now transition to smoothing and grading the hillside and applying the geotech fabric later this month. While this project isn't complete yet, we are happy to have everything clean and move on to the next steps.

We completed the disassembly of the 132 RE #10 switch today. We still have some cleanup to finish and move the last of...
09/07/2026

We completed the disassembly of the 132 RE #10 switch today. We still have some cleanup to finish and move the last of the tie plates and the frog, which we plan to do this week. That's another big item off the list of work that needs to be done. The rail and this switch will serve as the main entrance track, and the first switch reached inside the new yard. You'll definitely be seeing it again as we assemble it once the grading is complete.

Work continued on disassembling the switch, which is the last piece of the track one of our neighbors is donating to us ...
09/06/2026

Work continued on disassembling the switch, which is the last piece of the track one of our neighbors is donating to us that needs to be removed. We removed most of the remaining spikes and joint bars today and labeled all the slide plates and other specialty plates so that they can be reinstalled in the correct location. We have about 1/3 of the switch left to move.

Work also continued on the cleanup project on the northwest edge of the property. We began clearing the last of the jun...
08/29/2026

Work also continued on the cleanup project on the northwest edge of the property. We began clearing the last of the junk across the middle of the hill and started filling so that we can slope the hill.

We began working on taking apart the 132-lb #10 switch that a neighbor is donating to use in our new yard today. We re...
08/29/2026

We began working on taking apart the 132-lb #10 switch that a neighbor is donating to use in our new yard today. We removed most of the joint bars and marked all the pieces so that we can reassemble it more easily once we have the grading complete where it's going to be located. We also worked on digging up the tie plates in the area where we have already removed the rail. We ended up with 44 39-foot sections of 130PS (enough for 850 feet of track), which we will use as the first section of track in the yard, leading to this switch.

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Roanoke, VA

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