Gauntlet track near Guyandotte River

You are talking West Virgina right?? I have ridden those tracks via the Cardinal and some rail photography in the area. I have never seen a gauntlet track there.....there are a number of crossovers between the tracks to handle the slow coal trains running with fast intermodal and the 3 times a week Amtrak train. Can you be a little more specific as to location??? My daughter lives in St Albans just west of Charleston and I'll check it out.

Heading west on I-64, very close to the I-64 bridge over the 3-track line.  I can only get a fleeting glimpse, but it looks like a gauntlet for no apparent reason.  Looking at Streets & Trips, it appears to be along Old Guyan River Road.

I tried looking at the site on Google Earth, and unfortunately a coal train is sitting on the middle track

CSX runs thru St.Albans.

Correct.....ex C&O trackage.  My uncle worked his whole life for C&O out of the Huntington office. He was in what we might call today marketing and PR.

Each Fall there is a small group of O 3R guys that set up a layout in the St Albans depot.  My daughter almost bought the purple house across the street.  It had a bedroom upstairs with a covered sitting porch....I claimed that room if she bought it!! I could sit and watch trains all day!!!  

Gauntlet tracks allow trains on two tracks to share one track without switches (turnouts). All 4 rails are laid close together. These are usually used during construction. They are also used to get high-clearance cars (double stacks) through tight places.

A video tape by R&N Productions called Northeast Steam begins with Blackhawk Films of the Reading in the late 1930's. A G-1sa Pacific brings a passenger train through a tunnel being daylighted on a gauntlet track - on the Bethlehem Branch, I think.

Believe it or not, a b&w Fleischer Studio Popeye cartoon called Onion Pacific (posted on the Forum) has a brief sequence on a gauntlet track across a single-track girder bridge.

I believe the term is "gantlet".

Wikipedia indicates either is correct, but I'm inclined to agree gantlet is preferred.

I spell in Gauntlet.  It can have up to at least six rails (see photo in Wikipedia article).   I have about ten five of Atlas five-rail guantlet on my layout.  Here in NC there is some in the western and northern parts of the state - near WV, where there were narrow gauge and regular guage running through small stations in the mountains.    Len2 on this forum knows all about it and will perhaps see this and reply.  

Use Bing Maps and put in: 38.423066,-82.298689

Link to Bing Maps

Then switch to "birdseye" view and zoom all the way in (it helps if you "uncheck" the show labels option in the birdseye view). The best view is if you rotate the image so that north is down and south is up (use the arrows by the compase to rotate the view).

It might be a "weigh in motion" location or some other type of sensor/scanner. Definitely and interesting set up.

Thanks, Retlaw.  That's it. 

Yup, 99% sure that's a scale.