Site Structures

e sure to head upstairs into JD Cabin, where the signal men controlled trains through the East end of Clifton Forge Yard, and enjoy clear views of today’s CSX railroad operations from this spectacular train watching vantage point.

Your visit continues with a tour of Smiths Creek Yard, where you will be escorted through restored railroad equipment. Our knowledgeable docents are happy to explain life on the railroad from inside a caboose in 1949. Discover how mail and packages were delivered across the country before airplanes and Fed−Ex. Climb into the cab of a real locomotive, sit in the engineer’s seat and look out over the tracks just as the men who operated these giant machines did in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

C&O Railway Heritage Center / image RWH

rowsing the informative panels and displays inside the restored 1895 freight depot gives visitors the historical knowledge of when, how, and why the railroad was built, the struggles that were endured, and triumphs that were celebrated as the railroad was constructed from Virginia’s Tidewater Region across the mountainous terrain to reach the Ohio River valley.

C&O Railway Heritage Center

lifton Forge, the heart of the Chesapeake & Ohio: Clifton Forge, though a small town, was an important place on the C&O. It was where locomotives were serviced and readied for the trip West over the Alleghany Mountains and East over the Blue Ridge Mountains and down the James River. There was a large shop facility for the overhaul and repair of locomotives. There was a large rail yard for classifying coal and other freight, a yard for less than car load freight, an icing facility, the main laundry facility for the railroad, a passenger coach yard, and the division headquarters for the region. It was all the things that comprised a railroad, crowded into a small crescent of land next to the Jackson River, and an archetypal example of the American Railroad.

C&O Railway Heritage Center