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Train enthusiasts will be turning their attention to Goshen this fall, as the town was announced last week to be the starting point of a series of passenger train excursions put on by the Virginia Museum of Transportation and Virginia Scenic Railway, and being pulled by the Norfolk & Western Class J No. 611 steam engine.
"We are delighted to help make this run possible,” Steve Powell, president of the Virginia Scenic Railway, said in a press release. “We love trains and railroad history, and we look forward to partnering with the Virginia Museum of Transportation to host the legendary 611 and bring the steam engine roaring to life in the Shenandoah Valley. This is one of the prettiest routes around, and we are excited to share it.”
The excursions will begin in Goshen where passengers will board the train and then run eastward through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests and into the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton where the train will pause without disembarking before being joined by a pair of diesel locomotives for the return trip to Goshen. The excursions will run twice a day every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in October, as well as the first weekend in November. Ticket prices range from $99 to $249.
The train will board just outside of the town boundaries, in Rockbridge County, which will collect an admission tax on each ticket sold, 10 percent of the price of the ticket up to $3.
Goshen Councilman Steve Bickley told The News-Gazette that the town has approached the county about doing a profit sharing arrangement for the tax, with one-third of it coming to Goshen and two-thirds remaining in the county. The town is also working on trying to find ways to keep passengers in town in hopes that they’ll utilize the shops and restaurant in town, which will also generate some tax revenue for Goshen.
“The people that are coming who can afford those kinds of tickets, they can afford to spend a little money in our stores,” he said. “We’ve just got to do something to keep them in town a little bit rather than get off the train and go off to the next place.”
The land where the passengers will board the train is owned by Will Harris, who is the president of North Fork Lumber Mill outside of Goshen and owns a number of properties in and around the town. Harris is working to clear the land in anticipation of setting up facilities for the excursions. This year, the facilities will be temporary, but by next year, if the
THE N&W Class J 611 steam engine has been pulling passenger cars on the tourist short-line Strasburg Rail Road in Pennsylvania since 2019. (Darryl Woodson photo) excursions continue, he hopes to have permanent restrooms and a train station installed at the very least.
In addition to eager passengers coming to embark on one of the excursions, the 611 engine itself will likely draw nearly as many people to the town. The engine was built in Roanoke in 1950 and is the last surviving member of 14 Class J locomotives. It is owned by the Virginia Museum of Transportation and was restored to running condition in 2015. After pulling some excursions in western Virginia, the engine headed to Dutch Country in Pennsylvania in 2019 where it became one of the rotating engines with the short-line tourist attraction, the Strasburg Rail Road. It was pulled by diesel engines back to Roanoke earlier this year with no plans announced for future operations – until last week.
The excursions coming to Goshen was “a bit of a surprise,” Bickley said, because it wasn’t something that the town had been actively pursuing.
“I would like to think it’s because of the changes we’ve seen in town over the last couple of years,” he said. “I know there were a lot of towns who have been lobbying the Transportation Museum to bring it to them. [Mayor] Tom [Mc-Craw] and I have spent the last two years shoving Goshen into people’s faces, and we’ve had some success.”
Both Bickley and McCraw are excited about what these excursions could mean for the future of the town.
“This can actually be the thing that pushes Goshen back over the edge, that gets Goshen back to moving forward instead of just constantly losing residents and losing interest,” Bickley said. “If you look at what the railroad has done in some of the other towns where they’ve brought these excursion lines in, they have the ability to really change the landscape of a small town.”
“There’s possibly a bright future in here for Goshen,” McCraw added.
If the excursions prove to be successful this year, Bickley said that Virginia Scenic Railway could potentially expand to offer the excursions for three months next year, and possibly even expand the operation further if the success continues. “Our hopes are that it can become a full-time, yearround event here, because that’s how you attract businesses into town,” he said. “Businesses can’t do a lot on one month out of the year or even three months out of the year, but if this becomes a full-time event, I think you’re going to see businesses showing interest.
“I think this can be a very pivotal time for the town,” he added. “I really do. Hopefully this works out. I think it can be very successful here, and I think it could be the windfall that we need.”
