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.

In the woods of Nelson County on the bank of the Buffalo River lay the earthly remains of the Piedmont soapstone mill.



The location of the old mill is most clearly marked by a dam across the river.



Stone was supplied to the mill by two nearby quarries. One quarry is high on a ridge, and delivered stone to the mill by way of a steep incline tram. The other quarry is at the end of a well graded, relatively level path along the creek. Try as I might, I could not find any sign of a tram or rail operation to this quarry.



The site is littered with pieces of soapstone that show signs of having been cut.



The creek below the mill site is choked with soapstone scraps and cutoffs. Piedmont mill once suppled soapstone components to a cooking appliance manufacturer in Toledo, Ohio.



Piedmont was eventually purchased by Virginia Alberene.



The milling equipment and many of the company houses were moved to Schuyler. The old mill site on the Buffalo River was abandoned by 1925.

Even though the old Virginia Alberene Soapstone mill looked abandoned and run-down, the main assembly mill was still in use.



Consequently it was securely closed and locked, and I did not make any serious attempt to get inside to look around. The only part of the main building easily accessible was through the carpentry shop.



The rails and walkway allowed heavy loads of lumber to be rolled into the shop. The I-beams hold the walkway up above Ivy Creek, which runs directly adjacent to and under the buildings at this point.



Walking down the walkway and into the dark mill, two carts were in the shop. One was partially loaded with lumber.

There were no carpentry tools in the shop. The place appeared to have been cleared out for use as a warehouse.



Pallets of machinery were scattered around under the skylights.



A large inventory of pipe and pipe fittings were in the mill. I was not sure at the time whether the owner of the building might be leasing space, or if this pipe had something to do with quarrying and cutting soapstone.

The abandoned grade of the Nelson & Albemarle Railroad crossed under the overhead crane.



Looking north from under the overhead crane, the abandoned railroad grade is to the right, and the offices/depot for Virginia Alberene Soapstone are to the extreme right. The overhead crane has been used to dump scrap cutoffs and broken pieces of soapstone on the abandoned grade.

It is also apparent in this view that the mill is built practically on top of Ivy Creek, which passes under the exposed I-beams in the foreground. Lumber for building shipping crates is stacked near the end of a push cart track that leads into the carpentry shop.



At the extreme west end of the overhead crane was the point where cut stone from the gangsaws actually entered the mill. The overhead crane placed the slabs on a cart that rode rails in a trough that dropped the floor level of the cart even with the floor level of the sorting yard.



It was apparent from the structure above this portion of the sorting yard that this area had once been under roof. It became obvious as I looked around that this part of the mill had burned. Since there are charred beams laying around in the photo above, my visit must have been not too long after the fire occurred. The upper portion of all the structural steel was black, and the walls of the buildings in the background appear to be blackened and charred as well.

Along the path of the overhead crane was a long line of gangsaw sheds.



Large doors opened out onto a concrete platform littered with soapstone slabs and old machinery.



Running out from the gangsaw shed doors were rails embedded in the concrete. Small carts with flanged wheels were used to roll stone blocks and slabs in and out of the sheds.



Inside the gangsaw sheds were enormous rocker arms connected to crankshafts that were driven by large electric motors.



The rocker arms moved a bank of crosscut sawblades back and forth over a block of soapstone. Everything in the area of the saws was coated with silt, so water must have been circulated over the stone while it was being cut.

Running above and between the jumble of buildings at the Alberene Soapstone Mill in Schuyler was the traveling overhead crane.



The crane was used to move stones to the mill from quarries close by at either end. It also removed quarry stone from flatcars spotted underneath. The stone was sorted and stacked until it could be could be cut, at which time the crane moved the stone to the gangsaw shed. Cutoffs and waste stone from the mill was in turn loaded by the crane into railroad cars for removal to the Dust Mill.



Overhead cranes are one of the most characteristic structures of stone handling industries.



The overhead crane at Alberene Soapstone was also used to move lumber, and to load and unload trucks.

The boilerhouse was on the edge of the mill complex, hard against the bottom of a steep hill. Steam lines ran from it to the adjacent buildings.



The exterior of the main boilerhouse was soapstone. Even the tall smokestack was made of soapstone slabs.



This part of the boilerhouse was a composite of soapstone, corrugated metal, and cinder blocks. The cinder block wall surrounds a coal pile. Coal was delivered by rail car. There was a steep spur line that ran along the hillside behind the boilerhouse. Several rail cars could be pushed up the spur, with one positioned over an unloading trestle, and the brakes set. Once that car was emptied, the brakes would be released and the next car would roll onto the trestle for unloading.

Sitting on a siding adjacent to the engine house loading platform was a flatcar with an unusual load.



The load consisted of a wood sheathed box with a tarpaper roof, and some unidentifiable machinery mounted on I-beams.



Historian and author Garth G. Groff knew what this unusual flatcar load was.



The mysterious contraption was a marine steam turbine that had been moved to the mill in the 1970s. Whatever use the mill foreman may have had in mind for the turbine apparently never materialized.

On the southern end of the Virginia Alberene soapstone mill complex stood the repair and maintenance shop for the Nelson & Albemarle Railroad.



The mill locomotives shared the same facility. There is no turntable here, so all locomotives always faced Warren Junction, which meant they were always backed into the shop with their smokeboxes pointing out the big doors.



The shop had two wings. The east wing was apparently storage space. The much longer west wing was equipped for doing repairs and parts fabrication.



The west wing extended to a concrete loading platform. At the far end of the platform was a small warehouse building. The warehouse, as well as the locomotive shop itself, was built from soapstone slabs laid up like masonry. Heavy stone lintels arch over the high wooden double doors.



The interior of the shop was black and sooty. The floors were at different levels in different parts of the building. Some were wooden, while others were concrete.



The concrete floor had rails embedded in it for rolling platforms.. Large shop machines were driven by an overhead shaft and belt system.



There was a blacksmith's forge with racks of tongs, pliers, and other tools.

As the quarry spur of the Nelson & Albemarle Railroad approaches Schuyler from the southeast, it passes the Dust Mill.



Here railroad cars were loaded with finely milled soapstone dust, which was sold as industrial grade talc. Used in the manufacture of tires, paint, and concrete, the dust was ground from waste stone from the quarries, and cut-offs and scrap slabs from the mill.



The north wall of the existing dust mill building clearly shows the roofline of an adjoining building that is no longer standing.



The "missing" building stretched far to the north, and apparently contained the actual milling machinery that was used to grind the soapstone. The milling machinery was moved to Schuyler when Virginia Alberene bought Old Dominion Soapstone, who had built their mill at Damon, Virginia.

There is a railroad grade along the top of the retaining wall at the upper left, and along the far right.

By the time I first visited Schuyler, the Dust Mill had already burned, and most of the equipment had been scrapped.




Most everything inside the existing Dust Mill building had been removed and scrapped also.

Following the railroad grades toward the main mill, the tracks past close by the shops.

This soapstone quarry is near Schuyler, Virginia. It is one of a series of quarries in a line along a hillside east of the Virginia Alberene soapstone mill.


The quarries were connected to the mill by a branch of the Nelson & Albemarle Railroad. This is my unscientific way of determining that the rail used to serve the quarries was about 3 and a half inches tall.


Sitting in the brambles on the quarry spur is an old railroad car. This is a Chesapeake and Ohio pre-World War One vintage flatcar. The Nelson & Albemarle Railroad leased flatcars, a ballast car, and a passenger combine from the C & O. Over the time these cars were leased, they became the oldest cars owned by the Chesapeake & Ohio that were still in service.


Little locomotives were knocking these flatcars around between the quarries and mill long after arch bar trucks had been banned from the interstate rail network.


Looking toward the soapstone mill from the deck of the flatcar.

In March I drove up to Nelson County to try to find more signs of the long abandoned railroad of the Standard Soapstone Company.

In the woods near Variety Mills, a rural and remote area, abandoned railroad grades and soapstone quarries can still be found.



This soapstone railroad grade runs between the soapstone mill near Phoenix, and the transfer yard on the C&O at Norwood. Not far from where this picture was taken is a junction with a branch line that ran to a pair of quarries.

The pair of quarries are close to each other, separated by a creek.



The quarry to the left of this photo was served directly by the railroad, with the old grade up on the hillside above the quarry leading to a switchback down to the area where stone was loaded onto railcars. The loading track angles directly to this creek in the direction of the second quarry, so I searched for signs of a trestle that carried the loading track across the creek.

I found no signs of a trestle, but right where I expected a trestle to be, I found two large cables crossing the creek.



I traced the cables to a heavy foundation near the second quarry.



Nearby was a taller foundation that was shaped roughly like a cradle to hold something cylindrical that was about 6 feet in diameter. And near the "cradle" foundation I found the remains of a metal pipe.



I believe the metal pipe may be a smokestack for a boiler that was mounted in the "cradle". It may have driven a winch that was mounted on the foundation near the cables. Framework may have held the heavy cables up above the winch.

An aerial tram may have been used to get the stone from the second quarry over the creek to the railroad spur. If so, is this an unusually short distance to haul stone via aerial tram? The trip over the creek to the rail spur may be 100 yards or so. Also, is it unusual for a carriage to ride on 2 heavy cables? All the information I have on aerial trams indicate one cable carries the weight.