Cass Scenic Railroad

he Cass Scenic Railroad State Park is a state park, tourist railroad operation, and steam preservation facility located in the former lumber town of Cass, West Virginia, in the eastern central region of the Mountain State. The park primarily consists of the Cass Scenic Railroad, an 11-mile long tourist railroad that is owned by the West Virginia State Rail Authority and operated by the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad. The park also includes the former lumber company town of Cass and a portion of the summit of Bald Knob, the highest point on Back Allegheny Mountain and the third highest in the state.

The line that today hauls tourists was originally the backbone of a significant lumbering operation developed by the West Virginia Pulp & Paper Company but later sold to the Mower Lumber Company. Track work up the Back Allegheny Mountain began shortly after 1900, eventually reaching the meadow area now known as Whittaker Station -- site of a logging camp for the immigrants who were constructing the railroad. The line later reached the top of Gobblers Knob, and then a location on top of the mountain known as Spruce. The company built a small town there, complete with a general store, houses, a hotel, and a doctor's office. Work soon began logging the red spruce trees which grew in the higher elevations.

The original intention of the railroad operation was to harvest red spruce for the purpose of making the pulp used in the production of paper. However, eventually the hardwoods that littered the mountain -- maple, cherry, birch, and oak -- were deemed worthy of cutting and transport down to a new mill in the town of Cass, along the Chesapeake & Ohio's Greenbrier mainline. WVP&P lumber tracks extended as far and as high as Bald Knob by 1910, but railroad operations shifted around the mountain as hardwood stands were depleted. Like many other timber and mining operations in the region in this era, gear-driven steam locomotives were used extensively on Cheat Mountain. In 1942 the Cass operation was sold to Mower Lumber, which cut and processed second-growth timber from the area. Mower's operations ceased in 1960, and the line and its equipment were soon sold for scrapping value.

Cass as a tourist railroad and geared locomotive haven has a group of local businessmen to thank for saving the line from the scrapper's torch. Led by a Pennsylvania train buff, local interests took notice of the scrapping progress and convinced the West Virginia state legislature to make the line a state park and tourist destination. The first train of vacationers ran from Cass depot to Whittaker Station in 1963, making use of former Mower Lumber Shay locomotives and logging cars to haul passengers. Eventually other Shays would be purchased by the state and rehabilitated for service, and in 1977 the entire town of Cass and the abandoned hardwood mill along the river also became part of the state park. Operation of the railroad by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources continued until 2015, when administrative oversight of the property was transferred to another state agency and the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad was contracted to operate Cass trains and maintain the equipment -- an arrangement similar to the one already in place in tourist operations in nearby Durbin, Elkins, and Belington.

Today the railroad owns 8 Shay locomotives, one rare Heisler locomotive, and one rare Climax locomotive. In addition to Cass shop crews, over the years volunteers from the Mountain State Railroad & Logging Historical Association have assisted in various rebuilding projects. Two regular trips are available to visitors: a 2-hour round trip to Whittaker Station and a 5-hour round trip to Bald Knob, the third highest point in the state. In the past, the railroad has also offered a five-hour round trip to the abandoned site of the town of Spruce: once the coldest and highest town east of the Rockies. Former company houses in Cass have been refurbished and are available for rent, and a caboose on Bald Knob is available for overnight camping. Town and shop tours are available daily to visitors who desire to learn more about the town and the lumber industry, and to observe how the geared locomotives are maintained by the talented Cass shop. A tour of a recreated logging camp is available at Whittaker Station.

Although the previous lumber operations connected to the outside world at Cass via an interchange with the Chesapeake & Ohio, today the Scenic line connects to the larger rail network over the mountain via a spur at Old Spruce that runs to a junction at Spruce with the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley's Elkins line — a former Western Maryland branchline. The D&GV in turn interchanges with the Appalachian & Ohio near Grafton, West Virginia. Recent track work by the D&GV has reestablished rail service between Cass and Durbin — a segment of the C&O's Greenbrier Subdivision, named for the river the long and scenic branchline followed.