THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 15, 1995 TAG: 9511150344
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
I've been poring over a book of beauties, as fixated on them as a fellow leafing through Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue.
These beauties are trains appearing in 200 photographs in color in ``Virginian Rails 1953-1993,'' by Kurt Reisweber, an employee at Colonial Williamsburg.
It is a 128-page pictorial book of the Virginian Railway, which extended from Deepwater Bridge in West Virginia coal fields across Southside Virginia to Norfolk headquarters. If you care as much for trains as I do, you may wish to meet the author at a book-signing Saturday, noon to 2 p.m. at Turn the Page on Colley Avenue.
Issued by Old Line Graphics in Maryland, the book costs $45.
Railroads run in Reisweber's family. His grandfather worked for the New York Central, his father collected train models, and Kurt took pictures of trains.
In pursuit of the Virginian, he drove 60,000 miles and took 1,000 pictures between 1989 and 1993. For the railroad's earlier years he gathered hundreds of pictures from three dozen photographers.
The railway was born in 1898 when William N. Page bought a four-mile spur tying Deepwater to a lumber mill at Robson. In 1902 came the chief builder, Henry Huttleson Rogers, friend of Mark Twain and partner to John D. Rockefeller Sr. in the Standard Oil Trust.
Rogers' name lives, misspelled, in Huddleston, Va., near Altavista. A daring speculator, he had the nickname ``Hell Hound Rogers.''
In a map, Reisweber traces in a thick red line the railroad's route - which even I can follow - and he writes about the towns in the eight districts. It is a book on which former employees of the railway and rail fans in general will dote.
The Virginian Railway vanished in 1959 when it was bought by its competitor, the Norfolk and Western Railway. Both are now a part of Norfolk Southern Corp.
Reisweber took pictures with an eye for scenery as well as for trains. He offers glorious scenes on which to linger.
On Page 87 is a dark train curving on a 720-foot bridge at Garwood against a snow-covered hillside stippled with bare tree trunks.
On Page 122, emerging from a tunnel onto a trestle, its slab of a face sunlit, a train looks as if it is coming right off the page at you.
On Page 82, stretching across a towering viaduct above Blacklick Creek, is a locomotive and six cars strung out against the blue sky as if placed there by a child at play.
On Page 70 two coal trains on nearly parallel levels race each other against a backdrop of snow. Below them, a third level waits for another train to appear.
The way to look at this book is to spread it on a table and go through it, page by page, with someone who likes trains, sharing the fun. by CNB