Cardinal - Good Map for New River Gorge

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snvboy

Service Attendant
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
163
Location
Virginia
I just returned from a lovely weekend in West Virginia, getting there and back on the Cardinal (trip report coming soon).

Did some exploring of the New River Gorge, and picked up this map at the visitor center. I still had it in my pocket on the train ride back home and it was a great resource to see what was what that was flying past my window on the train.

Traveling westbound, you'll start this map at the bottom right at "John Henry Monument" and you can follow the tracks on the map west to Hinton, and the north along the river all the way until you run off the side of the map at "To Charleston."

You can download the map here:

https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/upload/NERI_ParkMap.pdf

in case that link dies in the future, hopefully this one will still get you there:

https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/maps.htm
 
Interesting map, thanks for posting that link. I wonder if it's advantageous(in terms of daylight) to travel on the Cardinal east, or west through the New River Gorge area?
 
Eastbound. On the westbound schedule you need an on-time train and to be traveling around the spring Equinox to get through the gorge before sunset.

Current schedule is here: https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/1019/700/Cardinal-Hoosier-State-Schedule-050117.pdf

And I still haven't gotten my trip report done on this one.
Thanks for the response. I will remember that, if I do decide to do a USA Rail Pass trip over eastern US Amtrak linesone day, and(very likely will) include the Cardinal among the trains I go on. At the moment, I was more thinking about doing a USA Rail Pass for the western half of the country, and traveling on the Southwest Chief(Chicago to LA), Coast Starlight(up to Seattle), and Empire Builder(back to Chicago). Debating if I should do one more Amtrak line on the side, such as Pacific Surfliner(to San Diego) or Cascades(maybe to Bellingham).
 
An update: I did finally take the Cardinal east through this area, and yes it really was nice to see the New River through this area. Along with of course, the Gorge bridge! On the travelogue/trip report board, I wrote up about my experience taking the Card through WV.
 
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