SVSC 717 heads to Jasper for a day of switching

9-16-24
SVSC
Bridgeport Yard
Mp 0.0
Bridgeport, AL
©️ Thomas L. Howard
SQSC 717 GP15-1
11 covered hoppers and 1 tank car

[@railroadman32257]

How far does that branch go now. Looks like to me it is pretty much abandoned beyond Jasper. A long time ago, I believe the then owner of the Walking Horse & Eastern also owned this shortline. He was a friend of mine in my childhood in Nashville. Last saw him 20 years or so ago when he spoke at a L&NHS convention in Huntsville. I'm retired from CSX and SR and also worked a few weeks a year as a docent on the Cumbres & Toltec.

[@trainnut2012]

The line ends at Jasper Materials in Jasper

[@trainnut2012]

It went all the way to Pikeville before the coal dried up

[@railroadman32257]

A lot of lines went from somewhere a lot further to somewhere else before the coal dried up. I'm doing a simulation for ORTS of the "J" line and I am including all of the branches as they were around 1960. I have the Sparta branch all the way to Ravenscroft & Clifty and this one to Pikeville. As a Freshman in the Vanderbilt Engr. School, I attended the surveying camp a few miles east of Sparta in 1957. The old right of way went around the base of the clifts, from the camp. Turned out to be the most valuable part of my time at Vandy as I was 34 years on the railroad, most of it involving measurements of track geometry. That part of the Sparta branch, beyond Sparta, died around 1936.