Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 22, 1993                   TAG: 9311200060
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

RAIL BUFFS ARE PUTTING HISTORY BACK ON TRACK

That's why the Appalachian Railroad Heritage Partnership is excited that a $16,850 grant, awarded recently by the Center on Rural Development, will allow the hiring of a part-time director to coordinate activities to preserve and promote the railroad history in Western Virginia and southeastern West Virginia.

The partnership is creating a chance to experience some of the romance of 100 years ago, said Wayne Strickland, Fifth Planning District Commission executive director and partnership member. Its goal is not only to

record historical sites, but to find funding to preserve and interpret their significance for tourists.

Too many visitors fly into Washington, D.C., and never make it the extra 200 miles to this area, Strickland said. He envisions a busload of people from Dulles Airport traveling through the established historical sites of Virginia and making a loop through the railroad heritage of the state's southwest section. People in New York should be able to pick up a brochure that tells them about Virginia's railroad history, he said.

"This is the premier railroad heritage area in the country," Strickland said.

The grant opens the door to greater marketing of the region. Although it is specific to Virginia, Strickland said, the partnership is working with West Virginia to bring in whatever resources it has to expand the project. "It's a cooperative effort that brings in West Virginia," said Kay Houck, executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke. "We will be stronger because we're working together."

The new position will be based at the Transportation Museum, and should be hired by January.

"We've come to a point now where we need a person to help organize us and form structural bylaws," said Strickland. The partnership is comprised

of so many people who have other full-time jobs that it needs someone to focus its efforts, he said.

The group was formed when about 30 to 40 people _ including Houck and Strickland _ from museums, economic agencies, the tourist industry, planning commissions, schools and governments gathered in the summer of 1989 to talk about a possible project to boost the region's economy. The following year they met again and formed a consortium.

A steering committee developed an action plan with the preservation of the railroad history and tourism as the group's primary goals, Strickland said. The partnership spans 25 counties from Rockingham to Tazewell in Virginia to Nicholas in West Virginia, and focuses on three railroads: Chesapeake and Ohio (now CSX Transportation), Norfolk and Western, and Virginian (both now Norfolk Southern Corp.).

"We stressed the tourism but we have to have a product, and that's railroad history," he said. "We're not just looking at names and numbers, but magic and meaning."

The meaning is in the memories of railroad workers and the families who grew up with trains as part of their everyday lives. The magic is in the steam engines that forged their way west and contributed significantly to the coal, timber and iron industries.

This entire region was a great supplier of resources and "the railroads tie it all together," Strickland said. "Without them we couldn't have done as much.

The steam engine holds a certain romance of days gone by, Houck said. As interest in American nostalgia grows, more people are discovering the railroad, she said.

"There's not an opportunity to experience the railroad like it used to be" and that's what people want, she said.