Bergoo had a yard with a 70 car capacity. There was a short spur off the mainline here to Leatherwood.

On November 4-5, 1985, Hurricane “Juan” washed out several sections of the WM's Laurel Subdivision track between Bergoo and Curtin. At that time, the last active customer on the Bergoo to Webster Springs section was the Pardee & Curtin lumber mill at Barton (Curtin). Shortly after that, the Elk River Sewell Coal Company (a subsidiary of Westmoreland Coal) began negotiations with the WM to acquire the line from Bergoo to Webster Springs.

Negotiations took place over the next few months and on May 15, 1986, an agreement was reached whereby Elk River Sewell acquired the portion of the Laurel Subdivision between MP 73.70 near Bergoo and MP 86.17 at Webster Springs. As part of the sale agreement, ERS also acquired two Chessie GP-9's (C&O 6098, in C&O paint and C&O 6170, in Chessie System paint).

Since ERS never incorporated the railroad as a separate subsidiary (the 'Bergoo & Western' name was purely fictional), it remained a private rail line (non common carrier), and as such, it couldn't serve any other customers (not that there were any to be had). Therefore, the B&W operation consisted mostly of switching the Elk River Sewell mine operation at Bergoo and assembling the cars into trains for the WM crews out of Laurel Bank to pick up.

At the beginning, the two units remained in the Chessie era paint, but were eventually painted and lettered for the fictional 'Bergoo & Western' line. ERS also built an enginehouse at Bergoo where the two GP's were stored when not in use.

After the end of operations at Bergoo a CSX crew was sent on July 5, 1994 to remove the two GP9's. The GP's were later wrecked in Macon, GA. in August 2000 and subsequently scrapped.

(info by Ron Stafford)