Norfolk Southern razing building at Roanoke Shops
The familiar building and its white smokestacks will be replaced by the landing for a walkway.
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Thursday, August 1, 2013
The black-and-white Norfolk Southern Corp. sign that locates the Roanoke Shops has temporarily come down as the railroad deconstructs an obsolete downtown building on which the sign had hung.
The building and its two white smokestacks, fixtures in the eastern skyline of downtown, are being removed this week.
But the sign will be remounted on a brick building about 50 feet east of its old spot, railroad spokesman Robin Chapman said.
That’s even though it doesn’t quite mean what it used to.
The phrase “Roanoke Shops,” also known as the East End Shops, arose in an earlier era for the large railroading complex east of Interstate 581 downtown. Norfolk and Western Railway manufactured hundreds of steam locomotives there. Just before 2000, the railroad, which had become Norfolk Southern, still operated separate locomotive and freight car shops at that location. The railroad ceased its car operations and in 2005 leased that space to Chicago-based car manufacturer FreightCar America, which is still there.
Chapman said all Norfolk Southern is doing now at its Roanoke Shops is maintaining and overhauling locomotives.
But various downtown rail facilities are under improvement. The building being removed housed a filter for coal-fired boilers that were shut off about 10 years ago, when the railroad switched to natural gas for power and heat at that location. The adjacent stacks are also idle.
In their place, crews will place the landing for a new pedestrian walkway leading to an employee parking lot north of Shenandoah Avenue, Chapman said.
The railroad needs the pedestrian walkway because of plans to eliminate an at-grade track crossing there. That’s part of a previously announced upgrade of company-owned tracks in Roanoke. That project is designed to speed up trains on that segment of the north-south Crescent Corridor and east-west Heartland Corridor and make freight rail more competitive with trucking, company officials have said.
1. 41-vehicle wreck ties up traffic Sunday on I-81 in Rockbridge County
2. Virginia Tech football roster has holes on picture day
3. Medicare penalties hit hospitals in Roanoke, New River Valleys
4. Microfestivus beer event gets downtown Roanoke hopping
5. McFarling: 2 little numbers are a big hurdle for Virginia Tech football
6. Arrest made in case of missing Nelson County teen
7. DAN CASEY: Copter cost still stirring up dust
8. Virginia attorney general's office grows under Ken Cuccinelli
9. Roanoke farmers markets making local foods more accessible
10. Man's drowning is 5th in Lynchburg area
THE ROANOKE TIMES
