15 barges

For the past two weeks, I've spent my days at the West Virginia Capitol covering the Legislature. It's been tiring, and it has kept me away from the river.

But the 2017 regular session ended Sunday, so this evening I was free to go back down to the river.

About nine months ago I was lamenting how I rarely saw boats pushing 15 barges loaded with coal. But around October, that began to change when I spent a day upriver in the Racine and Belleville pools. This evening I got to shoot a Crounse boat coming down river about sunset pushing 15 loads.

Perhaps coal has bottomed out on the river. We'll just have to wait and see.