Vince Staten: 1910 Train Wreck near Clinchport, Va.

Saturday, February 01, 2014

At 12:08 PM, w4cz@aol.com said...: Vince, I remember another derailment at that same exact spot about 65 years +/- ago! I've searched and cannot find an exact date, but I am 76 now at it should have been when I was about 10 or so years old +/-. I was born in Norton (May 1938) and my family moved to Mt. Carmel when I was one year old. We traveled U.S. 23 to visit my mothers family in Norton about every month of my early years thru my early teen years.
I remember the derailment as it was a few hundred yards North of the high trestle at Copper Creek, up river from Speers Ferry. I do not remember if there were any casualties, but I remember the derailed freight cars scattered down the embankment to the North Fork of the Holston Rover. The cause of the derailment was the same as the one in 1910, bolders on the tracks from the cliff on the East side of the tracks North bound!

William (Bill) D. Price
At 4:34 PM, Roger Brickey said...: I pretty sure that the recent picture in the paper of the train wreck was the remants of a wreck in the 70's. I was raised about 200 yards from where the picture was taken. My mother used to talk about a train wreck and people carried the coal away, I don't think it would have been the 1910 , since she wasn't born until '24. I don't know where the 1910 was but it is sounding as if there has been at least three wrecks between Speers Ferry and Hill Station. 1910, 1950, 1977. ???