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The scheduled train excursions from Goshen are one step closer to happening as the Norfolk & Western 611 engine and several of the restored, period-accurate passenger cars arrived in Goshen from Roanoke last Thursday. The remaining cars will be arriving in Goshen later this week.
“We’ve been working on it since February,” said Will Harris, president of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. “It’s real, it’s really here and we’re really going to run excursions.”
Harris owns the land where the train will take on passengers prior to each excursion to Staunton and back. A new siding of track has been laid for the train, and the land has been regraded to allow for passengers and onlookers to gather to see the train.
“We had to do a lot of grading down here to get this property ready,” Harris said in an interview on site last Friday morning. “It was pretty rough. We moved a lot of material to have it graded to put the siding in. Several board members, one in particular, Gavin Miller, worked very hard to get this siding together, and they and my employees have done a lot to make this happen.”
There won’t be an actual station built for the excursions this year, although the station does have a name: Victoria Station. It is named for the Victoria Furnace that used to operate on the land. The iron ore foundry was built in the 1880s and helped put the town of Goshen on the map. The furnace closed in the mid-1920s, but some remains of the building are still there.
The 611 engine was built in 1950, the 12th of 14 Class-J engines built for Norfolk & Western. It ran throughout the 1950s before being retired in 1959 and then donated to the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke in the early 1960s. It underwent a restoration in the early 1980s and began pulling train excursions in numerous states, including Florida, New York, Illinois and Missouri. It was retired again in late 1994 and returned to the museum in Roanoke. It underwent a second restoration in 2014 and returned to pulling excursions in 2015. Its most recent excursions were in Pennsylvania, in short trips along the Strasburg Railroad in Strasburg. The excursions from Goshen to Staunton will mark the engine’s first excursions in Virginia since 2017.
The track that runs through Goshen is a spur off of the main line, which makes it safer for the kind of crowds that the 611 engine can draw, both of passengers and people who just want to watch the train.
“We don’t want that happening close to our main line,” said Steve Powell, president of Virginia Scenic Railway, which is putting on the excursions. “We don’t want people close to where we’re running freight trains, [with] freight trains passing by. Goshen is a little spur line that allows us to get away from the main line and we can have lots of people close to the tracks on that little spur track.”
With the longer distance of the excursions, Powell said, the engine will be able to run a little faster than it did in Pennsylvania, reaching speeds of around 40 miles per hour through the valley between Goshen and Staunton.
“It’s gonna be a cool opportunity for people to ride and just see the state in a different way,” Powell said. “Hopefully we’re gonna hit peak leaf season while this is going on.”
In addition to the historic engine, the passenger cars that the 611 will be pulling are also from the 1950s and ‘60s, though most are from different railroads around the country. One of the passenger coaches is an original Powhatan Arrow car, also made by Norfolk & Western and likely would have been pulled by the 611 engine at some point during its original service. The train will also include a trio of bilevel passenger cars from Chicago, Ill., which were common in the city at the time.
“[They’re] a little unusual for this area, but they were pretty common up in that area,” Harris said. “They would be period correct, but would not have been used in Virginia.”
Other cars include a Crescent Harbor sleeper/ lounge car built in 1948 for the Southern Railroad; a 501 Dome Car built for the Santa Fe Railroad in the 1950s; the Pontchatrain Club Car, a parlor club car built in 1911 for the Illinois Central Railroad; a 1950s coach car from the Pennsylvania Railroad; and a dining car and table car built by Amtrak in the late 1960s. Currently, the Powhatan Arrow coach, the dome car and the Crescent Harbor are in Goshen with the 611, while the remaining cars will be arriving by the end of the week.
Tickets for the excursions are still available, ranging in price from $99 to $249, and can be purchased online at https://www.virginiascenicrailway. com/rides.
