Trains – October 2019

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