BY JENNY KINCAID BOONE
THE ROANOKE TIMES
Old settler routes. Mountain vistas. Hiking trails and outdoor sports.
Tourism gurus have a plethora of options for marketing the Roanoke Valley and its surrounding areas as a worthwhile stop for out-of-towners to spend money.
Railroading is the newest push.
In March, the Virginia General Assembly agreed to tap the Roanoke Valley, Alleghany Highlands and parts of central Virginia as Virginia's Rail Heritage Region. Collectively, these areas have housed the state's largest concentration of rail facilities, such as Norfolk & Western's Railway shops in Roanoke, the Southern Railway in Monroe outside Lynchburg and Chesapeake & Ohio's shops and rail yards in Clifton Forge.
Executives at six railroad-related museums and organizations believe that combining their marketing efforts will draw more railroad buffs to the region and boost tourism revenues. These groups include the O. Winston Link Museum, the Blue Ridge Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge.
These entities sent a letter to state lawmakers with this request, and lawmakers granted it.
The next step is paying $1,000 to $2,500 to create signs with the region's new name and image of a train wheel, its official logo. The signs would go up on interstate highways and other roadways, said Bev Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke.
The Virginia Tourism Corp. has given the group a $3,000 grant to match the $3,000 already contributed to the project by the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center, the O. Winston Link Museum and the Virginia Museum of Transportation.