1
any railfans associate highways
with railroads: the south end of
U.S. Route 1 with the Florida
East Coast, U.S. Route 30 in
Nebraska with the Union Pacific,
U.S. Route 66 with the Santa Fe. In another
example, from North Carolina to Pennsylva-
nia, U.S. Route 220 passes many significant
sites on many different railroads — so many
that it merits the appellation “railfan road.”
Along 680 miles in five states, the mostly
two-lane U.S. 220 runs directly through
eight historic railroad shop towns. It passes
through or misses by only a few miles
another dozen shop or headquarters towns,
and a significant number of restored
stations. When fewer than 200 steam loco-
motives run in all of North America, two
tourist railroads operate steam about 60
miles apart on rails that the highway crosses.
“There is an irony in a highway route
intimately tied to railroads,” historian John
Hankey says. “This one begins nowhere
and goes nowhere, but it connects a lot of
interesting places.”
NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA
Originally laid out by following existing
roads in the 1920s, and extended and
M
42 OCTOBER 2019
U.S. Route 220 connects some of railroading’s
most famous locations • by Oren B. Helbok