Kingsport - Wye or Loop?

[fergusontea]

Can anyone tell me anything about the track configuration in Kingsport?

Google maps finally updated their satellite photos of the area a little while back, so I am able to draw my rail bed lines better:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&ms ... 7&t=k&z=17

I'd like to update my simple guess of the location of the line, with some help.

Thanks!

-mike

[Ric]

Can't help on the Kinsport question, but looking at your map, the warehouse in Grafton is a Chicken barn. I live in the house south of it on the other side of the road. There is a foundation east of the barn that was a facility served by the railway. I think it was the station but don't quote me on it. It is to the right of the T on the driveway where there is a small line of brush which is where the foundation is. I also think that the line ran on the north side of the Chicken barn based on alignment. You can see the line of the track in the trees westward

[Ric]

Can anyone tell me anything about the track configuration in Kingsport?

-mike

Mike, from the Wiki, it says a wye
http://www.dardpi.ca/wiki/index.php?title=Kingsport

[fergusontea]

Thanks, Ric!

Like a good user, I searched the Forum in various ways but it would either tell me that too many results came back or it wouldn't bring me anything that looked useful.

-mike

[fergusontea]

Can't help on the Kinsport question, but looking at your map, the warehouse in Grafton is a Chicken barn. I live in the house south of it on the other side of the road. There is a foundation east of the barn that was a facility served by the railway. I think it was the station but don't quote me on it. It is to the right of the T on the driveway where there is a small line of brush which is where the foundation is. I also think that the line ran on the north side of the Chicken barn based on alignment. You can see the line of the track in the trees westward

Excellent! I'll stop by sometime.

Actually, I do intend to make another run on the branch from Kingsport to Weston and down to Kentville, to see if I can dredge up anything new to photograph.

Now all I need to do is study that photo of Kingsport to see if I can figure out exactly where the wye was. The best thing would probably be to print the map and then drive around the village.

-mike

[Ric]

Excellent! I'll stop by sometime.

Actually, I do intend to make another run on the branch from Kingsport to Weston and down to Kentville, to see if I can dredge up anything new to photograph.

Well, we could make a day of digitally recording what is left if you were bored

Now all I need to do is study that photo of Kingsport to see if I can figure out exactly where the wye was. The best thing would probably be to print the map and then drive around the village.

-mike

Once Dan chimes in I think you will have your answer. Dan also has an interesting story about a business car that got stored out there. I have partial bits of memory...enough to make me dangerous but not enough to be relaible. I seem to recall something about bents/trestle on one leg of the wye but I could be mistaken.

[Dan Conlin]

Kingsport had a wye with the stub end pointing southwest. The western switch for the wye split off the mainline just past the Longspell Road level crossing. The western leg of the wye curved sharply to meet the wye switch at the sharp elbow of Pleasant Street. The stub end of the wye ended in a 70 or 80 foot engine house about 2/3 of the way to highway 221. The eastern leg of the wye was just as sharp and joined the mainline where it crossed Medford Road. Inside the wye was a siding for the two fruit warehouses on the south side on the mainline. The station on the northside.

I hope this helps. It is always a challenge to describe this sort of things in words.

If you have access to an air photo library anywhere, there is a superb 1945 air photo of Kingsport which shows all this in crisp detail: A8719-34. You can even see a train sitting at the station with two passenger coaches.

If anyone has an e-mail for Ivan Smith in Canning, he has drawn up a pretty good track plot on paper for Kingsport and I imagine he'd be happy to mail it to you.

If you do walk the old tracks in Kingsport, it is hard to spot much around the wye area, although the portions of the foundation to the enginehouse still exist, recyled as a garage foundation. I find Kingsport to be a pretty friendly little place. Once you make clear that you are researching the old railway, they stop wondering why you are walking through thier backyard and start telling you things. "I remember the screech of the wheels coming around the wye..." "Dad went to school on that train etc."

I would recommend having a look at the stone railway culvert over the stream just north of the Longspell Road crossing. It is a beautiful piece of drystone masonwork- looks like something Incas built. Over 50 years of zero maitainence and it is still holding up.

[fergusontea]

Thanks, Dan! I updated my Google map to suit. It's all guesswork but we're close enough for now.

-mike

[Dan Conlin]

Your map of the wye looks right on. Nice plotting.

The two Kingsport warehouses by the way were the Mayflower Fruit Company (great name!) right across from the station and the Kingsport Fruit Company just to the east of the Mayflower warehouse. Both warehouses just fit inside the wye. You can see the two ends close together on the photo of Locomotive 470 at Kingsport on the the Kingsport Village web site: http://www.kingsport.ca/history/history.htm
(Same picture in Gary Ness' book I think.)

The Mayflower warehouse and station burned up together in a big fire in 1968. The Kingsport Fruit Company warehouse burned in 1971.

I checked out the silver roof just across the road which you flagged as a possible old warehouse when I documented the stone culvert which just west of it. I thought it might be a converted apple warehouse but it is a standard modern prefab aluminium chicken barn.

Dan