Buy Trainz Plus DLC - Quinnimont Coal Drag PC key

The Trainz Plus DLC - Quinnimont Coal Drag adds the C&O 2-6-6-6 H8 locomotive and a new detailed session set around Quinnimont, a coal-marshalling yard in the New River Gorge. You assemble trains from coal loads arriving from nearby mines, along with empty cars bound for the mines.

Quinnimont’s railways

Quinnimont became a major shipping point after railroad operations began there around 20 years before Thurmond started developing in the 1890s. Coal could be shipped east to Virginia even before the railroad through the gorge was complete to Huntington. In 1901, the C&O completed the Piney Creek branch from Quinnimont into the coal fields near Beckley, and Quinnimont’s yard handled coal from both the Piney Creek and Laurel Creek branches.

Trains could reach 130 cars in length. They were hauled to Hinton, where they picked up a helper engine for the trip up to Allegheny and on toward Clifton Forge. Quinnimont’s terminal facilities remained modest compared with Thurmond’s, but the town served as a staging area for inbound and outbound freight.

Mines and industry

The Quinnimont Charter Oak & Iron Company was organized in 1870 to build and operate an iron furnace near the mouth of Laurel Creek. It built a branch railroad about one and a half miles long from the C&O main line to the mine. The furnace operated for three years, making common pig iron with local coal and hematite shipped from Rich Patch, Virginia.

In 1873, Colonel Joseph L. Beury opened mines on the mountain above Laurel Creek to supply the Longdale Iron Company’s furnaces in Allegheny, Virginia. The first shipment of coal from the New River Coal Field came from these mines. A 25-foot granite monument weighing 55 tons stands beside the river in Quinnimont in Beury’s honor; its inscription records that the first New River Smokeless Coal was mined and shipped from the Fire Creek seam there in 1873.

Beury left Quinnimont in 1876 to open the Fire Creek mine with Jenkin Jones, John Freeman and others. A mine map from around 1879 shows the Pennsylvania and Virginia Iron and Coal Company operating near Quinnimont, about 1.5 miles south of Laurel Creek. In 1880, its Quinnimont coking plant was described as the New River Field’s largest, with 100 coke ovens in operation; a 1887 report recorded 105.

The Quinnimont Coal and Iron Company was incorporated in West Virginia in 1883 to mine coal and iron and manufacture lumber. It operated several nearby mines from 1883 through 1929: Big Q, Old Mine, Quinnimont, Big Q No. 3 and Lickbranch. The No. 1 mine produced briefly in 1950 and 1951, and Quinnimont-area companies operated mines there from 1952 to 1953.

The town and branches

A station opened at Quinnimont in 1874, and additional railroad structures followed from 1896. The town also had a boarding house, store, church, two schools and a post office, which operated from 1877 to 1947. In the 1920s, many residents worked for the railroad on runs to Thurmond or on the Laurel Creek and Piney Creek branches. Two passenger trains ran daily between Quinnimont and Beckley, and another travelled up Laurel Creek to Layand.

The Laurel Creek branch was extended 4.8 miles to Brownwood in 1890. The mining company operated it until 1899, then again from 1902 to 1906, after a period when the C&O leased and ran the line. The C&O bought it in 1907, and it became known as the Laurel Creek Branch. A large mine later opened at Layand, about 5.5 miles from Quinnimont.