Our chapter webmaster, Bob Johnstone, has assembled a great group of pix from out Fall Tour last weekend (Wild and Wonderful West Virginia Weekend). See:
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main feature of our tour was to ride the "Fiddles and Vittles" train at West Virginia's Cass Scenic Railroad State Park, but we visited other attractions too. We stayed Friday and Saturday nights at The Inn at Snowshoe, a major ski resort, toured the resort at Snowshoe Village (elevation almost 4,800 feet), toured the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at nearby Green Bank (world's largest steerable radio telescope- 110 x 100 meters surface), the went to Cass Village in preparation to riding the train. The trains are original logging cars pulled by restored early 1900's Shay steam locomotives. They are gear-driven locomotives capable of climbing 11% grades. They were used to carry logs to the sawmill and rail head in the valley running on temporary tracks. Our trip was only to Whittaker Station, a restored logging camp at 3,200+ feet. The train actually goes to the top of Bald Knob, the second highest mountain in WV (over 4,800 feet). We had a barbeque picnic-style dinner (good) and live bluegrass entertainment (not so good).Both evenings we had great get-togethers in a nice mezzanine in the hotel- wine by Dowdys of Allegheny Region and music by Darrell Carr, Potomac Chapter. We had a record turnout (for us)- 56 people signed up including 10 from Allegheny Region, six from Ohio Region, four from Keystone Region and 36 from the Potomac Chapter. Sure made for a nice long caravan of Studebakers. One breakdown- Murray Welsh's '50 Champion conked out in Petersburg, WV (turned out to be a defective new fuel pump). One scare when John Wherry's ('64 Daytona convertible) lights went out on the very dark road back from Cass to Snowshoe.Paul Johnson