Big Sandy coal

The lower nine miles of the Big Sandy River -- which forms part of the border between West Virginia and Kentucky -- are navigable. In the upper part of those nine miles are several coal docks. Both sides of the river have places where trucks or rail cars can transfer their coal to barges, and in some places coal can be loaded onto rail.

I was in that part of West Virginia tonight while working on a story for this week's State Journal about the Prichard rail-truck transfer facility.  By the time I got close to Kenova, darkness was falling, and I saw this dock. Me being me, my tripod was at home, and the guardrail wasn't a good place to set my camera, so I had to shoot this by hand.

Maybe I'll go back some night with the tripod. If I remember.

Oh, the Big Sandy is so narrow that the docks can moor only one barge wide. A lot of the pictures I've put on here at Kenova, W.Va., or Catlettsburg, Ky., have to do with traffic that has gone in or out of the Big Sandy.