All Aboard! Even You Wood Hicks!

Nestled in the mountains of West Virginia, Cass Scenic Railroad State Park offers excursions that transport you back in time to relive an era when steam-driven locomotives were an essential part of everyday life.


The town of Cass remains relatively unchanged. The restored white clapboard company houses can now be rented as vacation cottages. They really add to the charm and atmosphere of the town. From the company store and museum to the train depot, my Dad and I found a lot of things to do prior to our train ride.


We elected to visit the Lumber Mill Ruins and the Cass Shops, where they keep and repair the locomotives each night. I was transfixed by the huge machines they use to keep the engines in good running condition.

The Cass Railroad was built in 1901 to haul lumber from the nearby mountains to the mill in Cass. The locomotives are the same Shay locomotives used in Cass for more than a half-century. Many of the passenger cars are old logging flat-cars that have been refurbished.


With the steam engine warming up behind us, the ruins of the lumber mill were rather spooky as the morning fog (and the steam engine exhaust) rolled around them while we looked them over.


Once we boarded the train, the real excitement began! The great pistons of the Shay locomotive started pulsing, driven by hundreds of pounds of steam pressure. The shaft began turning, the wheels found traction, and the locomotive began to move. With thick, black smoke belching from its stack, the train pulls away from the station, passing the water tower from which the locomotive tanks are filled. As the train rounds the curve up Leatherbark Creek, we passed the Cass Shop and a graveyard of antiquated but fascinating equipment slowly rusts on a siding.


As the steam pressure builds, the locomotive is driven at full power, and the laborious journey up the mountain toward the two switchbacks begin. The loud huff of the stack, the clanking of gears and pistons, the furious scream of the whistle at the crossings, and the ever present clackety-clack of the rails made my dad and I feel as if we had indeed been transported back in time.


The train soon passed through the first switchback, reversed up a steep grade, and ascended to the second switchback where the process was repeated, and then finally into open fields and Whittaker Station. The switchback process allows the train to gain quick altitude, and in this instance, the train traversed a grade of up to 11 percent, or 11 feet in altitude for each 100 feet of track. A 2 percent grade on conventional railroads is considered terribly steep!

The Mountain State Railroad & Logging Historical Association has recreated a logging camp of the 1940's at Whittaker Station that shows both the living quarters and the equipment used by the loggers (the lowliest of them were called "Wood Hicks"). The centerpiece of Camp One is a Lidgerwood tower skidder, one of only two examples left in the world. These huge railcar-mounted machines carried logs out of the woods on aerial cables for distances up to 3000 feet. I was so engrossed by them, I completely forgot to take pictures!


We took the full 4 and 1/2 hour trip to Bald Knob, so we left Whittaker Station and proceeded to Oats Run for the engine to take on additional water at a spring.


The train then climbed up the mountain, finally reaching Bald Knob, the third highest point in West Virginia. The overlook at Bald Knob provides a spectacular view at an altitude of 4,700 feet.


Do you see what I see? The huge radio dish from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the small town of Greenbank lays at our feet in the distance.

I stood looking into the mountains singing "Country Roads" in my head while I waited for the ride back down the mountain to Cass...

Almost heaven! West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin' like a breeze

Country Roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

All my memories gathered round her
Miners lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine
Teardrops in my eye

Country Roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads

I hear her voice
In the mornin' hour she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And drivin' down the road I get a feelin'
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday

Country Roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
Take me home, now country roads
Take me home, now country roads...