At this point, I doubt many of y'all need any background, but in case you do...the Winchester & Western, aka the "Weak and Weary" was originally built between Winchester and Wardensville, Virginia, to feed lumber to the Baltimore & Ohio. The line was truncated to Gore, VA, after World War II, where an active sand mine furnished most of the road's traffic through 1986. That year, W&W purchased a former CSX line between Winchester and Hagerstown, which continues to see growth. The Sandman was on my list of stuff to see when I moved to VA, as I had seen a vintage documentary of operations from the road's pre-Omnitrax, Alco era, but I had assumed operations were relatively stable. The widely publicized announcement by Unimin that they were idling the mine moved the train high on my priority list, and I joined the horde of northeast formers who made a trip to see what might be the last revenue moves on this remaining stretch of the original W&W. On this particular day, I was lucky and ran into Jon and Greg, area railfans who had spent many years on the W&W, and were great guides once the train reached Gore. The line is still active, but only sees a move of power to and from the shops in Gore once every two weeks. (0:00) Intro
(0:16) East Piccadilly St., Winchester. Consist: WW GP38-2 3815, GP38 3817
(1:26) Working O'Sullivan Films
(3:07) Departing Winchester
(4:57) Round Hill Rd.
(6:05) Swapping power at Gore shops. New consist: GMTX 2256, WW GP38 3817
(7:47) Shoving sand back to the mine
(9:38) Arrival at the mine
(12:03) Departing the mine
(13:45) Returning east at Knob Rd.
(15:42) Gainesboro Rd., Gainesboro, VA
(16:56) Indian Hollow Rd.
(18:54) Intersection of US-50 and VA-614
(19:41) Round Hill Rd.
(21:29) Philpot St., Winchester
(22:42) Photo reel, featuring several shots not previously shown in the video
