Inspiration

Davis-Murdoch Stone Company

Soapstone in Virginia

The Smoking Gun

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

More facts come to light.

Picture-028_StandardPlantTrestles

Standard gauge tracks at the Standard Soapstone plant near Phoenix in Nelson County

My tour of the Phoenix area with Jim, along with the old photographs he sent me from his collection, certainly verified the existence of a narrow gauge industrial railroad initially serving Phoenix Stone then Standard Soapstone. In Hearbeats of Nelson, Paul Saunders had interviewed Phoenix residents who had worked as railroad laborers laying dual gauge track.

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Worn scrap of light rail at an abandoned Phoenix soapstone quarry site

But I had yet to see a photograph that showed narrow gauge track beside standard gauge track in a straight forward manner that would put the entire matter to rest. And so it was to remain for years. Subsequent visits to Phoenix turned up shallow cuts and fills that may well have been part of the narrow gauge right-of-way, as well as railroad track hardware near the abandoned quarry sites.

Immediately after the Pandemic I paid a visit to Garth Groff, author of the
Soapstone Shortlines book. We discussed my efforts to uncover evidence of a narrow gauge soapstone railroad. Afterwards Garth sent me exactly what I was looking for.

The Southern Railway Historical Society had published an article by E.R. Conner, III about Arrington, Virginia. Conner's article mentioned the Southern's dealings with Phoenix Stone's narrow gauge railroad. It also included the photo I had wanted to see for so long.

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The Southern mainline is to the right, dual gauge in the center, narrow gauge track diverging off to the left

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A track diagrm showing narrow gauge tracks

Garth supplied the evidence needed for me to consider this case closed. As an added bonus, he sent along a photo of a standard gauge Standard Soapstone locomotive.

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Standard gauge locomotive at the Standard Soapstone plant

This Heisler was the only steam locomotive owned by any soapstone railroad that was not a saddle tanker. Or was it? That is an investigation for another time.

Rampant Speculation

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

Here is another photo Jim sent me.

Picture-039-wagons
The wagons in this picture probably have been gathered and piled to be photographed for an auction catalog. It immediately brings to mind one of Jim's stories about how Phoenix soapstone would haul wagon loads of laundry sinks to the Southern Railroad's depot at Arrington.

These aren't wagons but carts, probably used for road grading. The soapstone company apparently graded and maintained the local roads using these horse drawn carts. This implies that the soapstone company was using horses, trucks, steam tractors, and trains all at the same time.

Picture-039-GraderHilited

Buried in the pile of carts is a road grader which I have emphasized in this copy of the photo.

RussellRoadGrader

The road grader bears a strong resemblance to the O scale Russell road grader available from Wiseman Modeling Services. The grader may have been used with the carts, and was also horsedrawn.

Broken and flawed soapstone coming out of the quarries may have provided plenty of raw material for road building aggregate, but it would have to be crushed.

RockCrusherPlant

Back in the 1920s, road construction trade magazines contain ads for portable crusher/spreader outfits. Had Phoenix soapstone bought one of these contraptions?

AustinMfg

Apparently so. Here is another of Jim's old photos of items to be auctioned. This v-bottom side dump gravel hauler was most likely delivered with a crusher and bucket belt to lift the gravel into the box. Where did the crusher and bucket belt end up?

Picture-023SoapstonePlantWorkers

At the talc loader, of course.

What's Going On Here?

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

One of the old photos Jim scanned for me I found particularly interesting.


Picture-023SoapstonePlantWorkers

This photo appears in Paul Saunders' book Heartbeats of Nelson. It was taken at the Phoenix Soapstone operation. The caption identifies it as soapstone workers.

Soapstone operations in Nelson County involved cutting big blocks of stone out of quarries. It is obvious that the men in the photo are not engaged in that type of activity. They appear to be shoveling light colored dirt or sand into wheelbarrows. I believe they are working a talc deposit. Soapstone being composed primarily of talc, it would seem probable that there could be an outcropping of the mineral talc itself near the soapstone deposits. Talc is very soft and flaky, light colored with a silvery luster. Handling it leaves a glittery residue on everything it touches. There were a wide range of industrial applications for talc, making it worthwhile to extract and ship.

The men with the shovels and wheelbarrows are providing the extraction. A side dump car to the right in the photo appears to be providing the means for shipping the talc. It does not appear that the workers are dumping wheelbarrows of talc directly into the side dump car. The talc is being dumped into the car after being lifted unnecessarily high in the air with a bucket belt. The lower end of the bucket belt would probably be catching the talc after it had been milled in a crusher.

Near left center there is a vertical pole or pipe that could well be an exhaust pipe for either an internal combustion or steam engine that would drive the crusher and bucket belt. I suspect it is a steam engine because a small diameter steam line is entering the photo from the left, running toward the base of the pipe. Simple "X" shaped supports are supporting the steam line.

A steam tractor is visible just down the hillside below the side dump car. I imagine that tractor might have been used as a locomotive to get the side dump car to the talc site. It all adds up to what would be a great little scene to model, requiring a lot of research and creative solutions to represent what is not visible in the photo.




Narrow Gauge in the Details

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

While narrow gauge equipment was not mentioned in the auction information, careful examination of the photos Jim had of the Standard Soapstone inventory indicated it was at the site at the time the operation shut down.

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The air pumps and Jenny couplers on this saddletank locomotive indicate it is standard gauge.

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Lack of air pumps and couplers on this locomotive lead me to believe it is narrow gauge.

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An enlarged detail of a photo of the Standard Soapstone mill after closure shows locomotives sitting in the weeds. One is a standard gauge Heisler. The boxy dark object to its right might be a Plymouth DL gas mechanical locomotive. If so, it was narrow gauge when sold to Alberene Soapstone in Schuyler where it was regauged to standard gauge.

SS-SideDump-PlymouthDL

This photo may also show the narrow gauge Plymouth DL. The coupler and air line on the side dump car indicate it is standard gauge, so the Plymouth might in on a parallel narrow gauge track behind the dump car.

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Jim had photos of various side dump cars that appear to be narrow gauge.

Photographic Evidence

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

We got the ATV back on the trailer and got in the truck out of the howling wind. Jim mentioned we were parked beside the main office building of Phoenix Stone.

PhoenixOfficePaymaster
Phoenix Stone Company offices. Paymaster window to the right.

Jim pulled out a big binder of old photographs. Most were family pictures, but there were a few shots of the old soapstone operation and the railroad. I tried hard to commit the details to memory, scribbling notes about what Jim had told me and the subject matter in his photos.

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Group photo takwn at the boiler house site that I photographed about 80 years later.

A week or so later I started getting emailed image files from Jim. He was scanning pages of his photo album and sending them to me.

NewMillTrackplan
Overall layout of the Standard mill and company town. All railroad grades shown were standard gauge.

The vast majority of soapstone photos were taken after the operation was shut down. The photos were used to illustrate a catalog of items to be auctioned.

None of the auction material mentioned the narrow gauge.

Too good to be true?

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

Even though Phoenix had shut down over 10 years before he was born, Jim had grown up hearing about the operation. He was very specific about the details of the narrow gauge, the remains of which were much more evident when he was young.

NGvsWagonRoad

Jim said all of the narrow gauge grade he remembered ran immediately adjacent to dirt roads. Along the Tye River the track was on the river side, the road was on the hill side. There the road had been used by trucks to access a gravel pit.

ArringtonPostcard

Before the narrow gauge, products from Phoenix Stone were hauled to Arrington by wagon. The wagon road still exists as State Route 661. In all the places around Phoenix that we visited that cold February day, I never noticed any indication of the old narrow gauge grade. Jim told me where it had been, but I saw no sign of it anywhere.

TyeRiver-TwinGate

High on bluffs above the Tye River, the ruins of the Phoenix Stone Company — the mill, the quarries, the boilerhouses, the company houses — were very small. That such a small company had built a “sprawling” narrow gauge that ran miles along the river to reach a transfer point with a standard gauge railroad struck me as far fetched. But I let Jim talk, because he was saying exactly what I wanted to hear. He was describing my On30 layout to me.

A Guided Tour

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

Website
A native of an old soapstone company town found my website

It happened that one day a guy named Jim saw my website and contacted me. We started emailing back and forth about soapstone history. Turns out Jim is from Nelson County, and his family worked for Phoenix Stone. He goes back to Phoenix occasionally to maintain a few family cemeteries. Jim offered to give me a tour of the Phoenix area.

Phoenix-Jim-1
Unloading the ATV on a frigid day

The day we picked to get together turned out to be windy and super cold. Jim brought his ATV for us to ride so we wouldn’t have to walk all over creation. As we were preparing to head out, Jim threw a pistol and a set of bolt cutters in the back of the ATV. “I know the kind of people we might run into.”

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Ruins of the Phoenix mill and plant

Jim took me all through the woods, through people’s yards, across posted private property. We went all over the place. We saw the ruins of the “old” Phoenix Mill, the Virginia-Chesapeake Soapstone Co. quarry site, old company houses, old family cemeteries, and a talc quarry.

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Phoenix Stone company house

I asked Jim if there had been a narrow gauge railroad at Phoenix Stone. He said yes. A 42 inch gauge railroad had run from the old mill site to the Virginia-Chesapeake quarry. It ran past the site of the old commisary, down past a row of company houses, along a creek to the Tye River, and all the way to Arrington, over 6 miles away.

PhoenixMap_NG
Detail of USGS map of area surrounding the ghost town of Phoenix, Virginia. Red lines are speculations as to the location of the narrow gauge railroad.



Standard Soapstone Corporation

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

My suspicions about the abandoned grade I was following through the woods from Norwood toward Rucker Run proved to be correct.

SOAPSTONE-SHORTLINES---pg34-37-3
Soapstone Shortlines, Garth G. Groff

Garth Groff, a librarian at University of Virgina's Special Collections, self published a small booklet on the history of soapstone in Virginia. In it, he makes brief note of the fact that Phoenix Stone was purchased by Standard. Standard had built the railroad to Norwood, and that railroad was standard gauge.

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Railroad track hardware found near an abandoned quarry at Variety Mills, Va.

Investigating the old Standard Soapstone railroad grade was a lot of fun. I discovered a lot of old industrial sites and remains of the old track.

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Boiler foundation built from dry laid soapstone slabs at Variety Mills, Va.

But the nagging question remained; had any of this been narrow gauge? Had some of it been dual gauge? Which parts? Had the quarry branches been narrow and just the line to Norwood been standard?

StandardMill-1
Concrete structure at boilerhouse site near Phoenix, Va.

What I needed was insight from a local resident. Someone with family ties to the Phoenix area who knew about the industrial history of the area.

Narrow or not?

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

MapSS-1
USGS Buckingham , 1968. Utility map "narrow gauge track" shown in red
The utility company map did not indicate that the narrow gauge railroad went to a connection with the Southern at Arrington, but to a connection with the Chesapeake & Ohio at Norwood.

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Tye River and town of Norwood
Norwood is a very small, very old town at the confluence of the Tye and James Rivers.

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Concrete abutments along abandoned railroad grade near Norwood
Driving north along the Tye River from Norwood I couldn't miss the substantial remains of an old railroad grade.

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Abandoned grade through the woods along Rucker Run
Thanks to local hunters that kept the grade clear, it was relatively easy to follow. Hiking over high fills and through deep cuts, I began to have doubts.

RuckerRunSS-2
Abandoned soapstone railroad bridge abutment
The extensive grading and heavy concrete abutments impressed me as being too monumental to have been built for the sake of an industrial narrow gauge. This grade looked standard gauge to me.

More information, still no evidence

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

An inquiry to the Nelson County Historical Society asking whether there had actually been a narrow gauge soapstone railroad found its way to an attorney named Dick Whitehead who sent me copies of ancient DGMR reports on Phoenix Stone Company.
DGMR-EconFile-884
DGMR ECON FILE - STANDARD SOAPSTONE CORP ca1926

The Phoenix Stone report mentioned that the narrow gauge ran to Arrington. So I collected my maps, gassed up the truck and headed out to Arrington and again came up empty. I saw nothing there to suggest an abandoned railroad grade or transfer point.
USGS_Arrington-884
USGS Arrington quad

Coming Up Empty

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

I wondered if there had been any narrow gauge industrial railroads associated with the old soapstone operations.



There are scant few published resources on the history of the soapstone industry in Virginia. Only a few of those make any mention of associated rail operations. Paul Saunder’s book Heartbeats of Nelson includes an interview with Robert Harlow, who was hired by Phoenix Stone Company to build dual gauge track at the site of a new mill under construction in 1925.
SaundersBook
Heartbeats Of Nelson, Paul Saunders, 2007

Time for a road trip. I managed to find the remote crossroads where Phoenix Stone had been. I drove out there and found almost nothing. No quarries, no mill site, nothing that looked like an old railroad grade. Just thick woods, rusty mobile homes, and mean dogs.
MapPhoenix
USGS Arrington quad

Moving Materials

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

The soapstone mills were built in remote areas close to the Soapstone Belt.

Quarries supplying stone to the mills were scattered through the surrounding countryside.

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Kierk Ashmore-Sorensen collection

At the time local roads were built to handle agricultural wagon traffic. The high volume of stone from quarry to mill and finished products from the mills to the outside world necessitated the construction of rail lines.

Virginia-Alberene Stone Company

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

One Company in particular was very successful manufacturing and marketing soapstone products.



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Kierk Ashmore-Sorensen collection

In the early 1900s, Alberene Stone Company had 100s of workers in the mill cutting, finishing, and assembling a variety of soapstone products.

What is Soapstone?

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

Soapstone is a term used to describe a range of minerals with the common characteristic of high talc content.


86MarW4K07
Abandoned soapstone quarry, Albemarle County, Virginia

Talc gives the stone a slippery feel when wet. Soapstone is not particularly rare. Stone from most deposits is milled into powder for its high talc content. But the soapstone in central Virginia is unusual in that it has a high density, consistent grain pattern that allows it to be cut, carved, drilled and routed.

Native Americans carved cental Virginia soapstone into bowls. In colonial days it was used for foot warmers. With the advent of indoor plumbing, there was a huge demand for Virginia soapstone. It is still used for kitchen and bathroom applications, and is well suited for labratory countertops.

Alberene-2-Enhanced
Soapstone slabs for countertops

Abandoned quarries in the woods are silent reminders of what was once a flourishing industry in the Blue Ridge foothills.

A Likely Candidate

The beginning of this saga can be found here.

As it happens, there is a unique and commercially viable stripe of soapstone deposits running right along the western Piedmont of central Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.



MineralMap_DMR
Virginia Minerals newsletter, April 1961

One of only a few places in the world where the quality of the stone is high enough for architectural and dimensional applications.

Derricks

Did I climb a steel guy derrick?



I have no specific recollection of taking this photo. Apparently I climbed up one of the steel guy derricks at Alberene in order to get a better perspective on the shape and size of the flooded soapstone quarry.

Touring Phoenix Soapstone

The Phoenix Soapstone Company in Nelson County closed up in the late 1920s.

MyTopo_Phoenix
A family cemetery and a few quarry sites are all that designate the old Phoenix town site.

Phoenix is a long lost soapstone town in an isolated corner of Nelson County. There is almost no sign of the stone operation left. I would occasionally drive down there and look around. Hunter’s shacks, trailers, yards full of junk and mean dogs, impenetrable woods. I never knew much about it.

An opportunity to learn more about Phoenix presented itself when a gentleman contacted me through my website. Jim Farrar was born and raised in the old town of Phoenix. He is related to many people still living in that area. Jim is interested in the history of the old soapstone operations, and he was willing to meet up with me and show me the sights.

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Jim unloads his ATV on a bitter cold February morning. Time to see the sights!

Jim returns to the Phoenix area occasionally to maintain several family cemeteries.

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A family burial site in the woods near Phoenix that Jim maintains.

Jim’s family connections to Phoenix extend back to the soapstone quarrying days and beyond.

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Jim’s father is buried in Phoenix

In all the years I have been keeping an eye out for information regarding the soapstone operations in Nelson County, I had never been able to find out much about Phoenix. Jim’s recollections and records have made me aware of how interesting an operation Phoenix was. I really appreciate him taking the time to show me around and relate some of his memories of growing up there.

As is typical when trying to piece together a picture of the past, one question answered leads to three new questions. I am looking forward to heading back up to Phoenix with Jim to find out more about the area.