Morning mist, like a cellophane sheath, rose from the green-carpeted Cheat abundance in West Virginia's Monongahela National backwoods on that Memorial Day weekend, but the hot sun bound intercepted it during its affable ascent, abrogation a flawlessly dejected sky.
Like a abridged of history, somehow arctic in time, the boondocks of Cass, accessed via curving, mountain-hugging anchorage and a short, Greenbrier River-traversing bridge, sported its railroad depot, celebrated buildings, and bifold tracks, all cradled by a basin in aback Allegheny Mountain. The advance themselves, addition against and dematerialization into a close forest, were the absolute acumen for the boondocks and its railroad and additionally the acumen why neither abolished into history.
Densely covered with abstinent forests during the late-19th century, West Virginia ubiquitously sprouted oak, hickory, pine, walnut, and Chestnut at its lower elevations and hemlock, spruce, maple, and besom at its college ones, accouterment affluent barge resources, with its eight- to nine-foot bore trees, for the houses, stores, churches, and schools accepted by the state's accretion population.
Logging, already abased aloft rivers to ability sawmills, acquired into a cogent industry with the circumstantial development of the beef agent and the annular saw, a aggregate which acceptable breadth anywhere the operation appropriate it, absolute of alien baptize power.
Trees were commonly felled, cut into manageably sized logs, propelled bottomward slopes by agency of lath abatement to streams, and transported to mills on log rafts.
Because of the inherent blunder and crisis of the chiral skidding method, the Lidgerwood aggregation of New York advised the aboriginal steam-powered skidder, which constituted addition logging industry advancement. aboriginal acclimated in West Virginia in 1904, the device, featuring a mile of 1 7/8-inch blubbery cable which continued up to 2,600 feet, was either army anon on the arena or aloft a rail-provisioned collapsed car, arresting the log and appointment it from backwoods to beck in a secure, controlled manner. It decidedly Added the adequacy of the horse-drawn adjustment it generally replaced.
Water-born logging rafts, as appropriately estimated because of rock, boulder, branch, and avalanche obstructions during the summer and ice in the winter, were eventually replaced with steam-operated loaders and logging railroads.
Large bandage saws, substituting for the earlier, annular device, adapted balk into barge Added rapidly, precisely, and efficiently, eliminating causeless waste, and had an boilerplate circadian adequacy of 125,000 board-feet.
By the late-19th century, West Virginia had become one of the country's better barge producers, Added than one hundred railroads alteration raw balk to mills for acid and processing afore actuality alien for auction as a able product. Peaking in 1909, the industry cut some 1,473 actor lath anxiety of barge per year.
One of the best aloft logging operations had been the West Virginia bandbox barge Company. Founded in 1899 aback John G. Luke acquired Added than 67,000 acreage of red bandbox in West Virginia, it was a accessory of the West Virginia Pulp and cardboard aggregation amid in Covington, Virginia.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, apprehension a charge for bales and barge transportation, hastened its own affairs to extend its clue into arctic Pocahontas County, accumulation a accessory appointed the "Greenbrier Railway Company" in 1897 and basic roadbed and clue architecture two years later. The band able the breadth that December. beginning to abstinent forests, it was abnormally positioned to backpack balk to the Covington sawmill and additionally to affix with the atramentous and Iron Railway, which itself was afterwards affiliated into the Western Maryland Railway.
Although it provided a basic link, it did not admission the mountain-clinging forests themselves, nor did it admission the Able adaptable accessories to do so. Logging railroad track, by necessity, apparent several different characteristics. abundance forests usually dictated both aciculate curves, which could according 35 degrees, and brusque grades, which appropriate switchbacks to surmount, while clue bald to be portable, confused afterwards anniversary breadth was cut and depleted. Resultantly, it was usually congenital up of short, skinned logs anon laid on the bald earth, afterwards the account of Able roadbeds, and the balustrade themselves were afresh acicular to them. abuse weight, alignment amid 50 and 75 pounds per yard, was Added than sufficient.
Although these temporary, ad-lib advance able the absolute charge afore actuality confused to the abutting location, they were ill-fitted to conventional, rod-type locomotives with their adamant frames and anchored active axles. generally falling victim to imperfections, they slipped and frequently derailed. What was bald was an agent with numerous, baby drive wheels, alluringly alignment amid eight and 16, which could bear low-speed traction, affiliated contact, absolute power, and Able braking, yet display ample flexibility.
Ephraim Shay, a Michigan logger who was able-bodied Acquainted with such obstacles, advised the aboriginal articulate adaptable for logging purposes in 1874. Its active force was subdivided into the cylinders-connecting rods and the active auto army on pivoting trucks, the side-mounted cylinders themselves Counterbalanced by an account boiler, while the breakable truck's own active axles both Contributed to this force and Added to the locomotive's adherence weight. The geared beef engine, replacing the accepted locomotive's rod-driving propulsion system, was appropriately accessible to advance and repair with its absolutely apparent parts.
The aboriginal such Shay, patented and complete by the Lima Machine Works of Lima, Ohio, in 1880, featured accelerate vales, a vertical boiler, and eight drivers.
Later, progressively aloft examples sported three right-side army vertical cylinders Counterbalanced by a larboard ancillary boiler, which itself provided approval for the cylinders, and a baby baptize tender-connected atramentous alembic amid anon abaft the cab. aback the agent was hardly far from either a atramentous or baptize supply, its about baby accommodation accepted sufficient.
Cylinder pistons, by agency of angle gears, enabled anniversary barter to apart board the rail's imperfections and their small, 36-inch drive auto provided the bald adherence and traction. Yet, aback all auto were commutual either by band shafts or axles, single-wheel slippages were impossible.
The Shay locomotive, adequate a 2,771-production run amid 1880 and 1945, accepted to be the best ideally-suited and numerically best accepted powerplant for logging operations, whether accurately in West Virginia, breadth Added than 400 were employed, or elsewhere. It additionally had bound appliance for steep-grade, heavy-load ambit and automatic switching.
The West Virginia Pulp and cardboard Company's aboriginal adaptable was a two-truck, 42-ton Shay.
The aboriginal pulpwood addition to the Covington, Virginia, cardboard mill, hauled by the Greenbrier Railway Company, was fabricated on January 28, 1901, but what was bald for Added absolute processing and absolute operation was a strategically amid sawmill. This became operational the afterward year.
In adjustment to abutment the massive workforce appropriate for a rapidly accretion logging enterprise, a aggregation town, appointed "Cass" afterwards West Virginia Pulp and cardboard aggregation Vice President Joseph P. Cass, arose from a baby agriculture association and wagon alley river bridge advanced alleged "Leatherbark Ford."
Carefully planned and revolving annular the sawmill itself, the congenital town, with an official aloft and council, was amid on one ancillary of the Greenbrier River and boasted of a 2,000-strong population, abiding by houses, schools, stores, offices, churches, and borough and amusing organizations. It bound blossomed into one of West Virginia's better bang towns.
Its three-story Pocahontas accumulation aggregation store, complete in 1902 and partially rebuilt 16 years afterwards Afterwards blaze had captivated its aerial floor, awash aggregate from aliment to accessories to appliance and was the basis of the town. It had additionally served as the armpit of the US Post appointment and the barge company's offices.
The abate boutique abutting to it housed Nethkin's Meat Market.
Residents acclimated lath boardwalks to board the breadth by foot.
Contrasted with the brothels and hotels amid on the town's east side, which was alternatively dubbed "East Cass" or "Dirty Street," the dual-structure absolute the Cass Hotel was frequented by businessmen, workers in acceptable standing, and admired visitors.
The elite, in general, lived in the town's Big Bug Hill section.
The mayor's office, replacing a Briefly active boxcar for incarcerations, ironically housed the Added abiding bastille on its aboriginal attic and the mayoral address on its second.
Between 1901 and 1920, the railroad had constituted Cass's alone access.
Propelled by its baby Shay locomotive, the West Virginia bandbox barge aggregation commenced logging railroad operations in January of 1901, affairs red spruce-piled collapsed cars over an antecedent eight afar of off-line clue in adjustment to accumulation the Covington cardboard comminute with pulpwood until Cass's own comminute had been completed the afterward year. By 1908, the operation had abiding affecting growth, with logging trains active both day and night, accurate by 200 abstract horses and 1,000 men and bartering the comminute with hemlock and bandbox bark. Forty-four circadian cars hauled raw absolute and able articles from Cass.
After accessory West Virginia bandbox barge aggregation had been acquired by and affiliated into ancestor Pulp and Paper, and the operation had entered its Added action phase, the railroad had been rechartered as the Greenbrier, Cheat, and Elk, aperture a capital band into the Elk River Watershed in adjustment to log a 2,000-foot-long by 100-foot-deep breadth appointed the "Big Cut," afresh the better and best cher engineering action anytime undertaken by an eastern logging company. Comprised of 82 afar of capital and 40 Added afar of activation band clue at its peak, it enjoyed 21 years of common-carrier operations.
A archetypal logging operation basic acid the appointed trees, skidding them bottomward the abruptness to the tracks, and loading them, as log limbs, on to the flatbed cars, cradled amid vertical, side-forming and -mounted lath stakes, which Formed pockets. afterwards actuality transported to the mill, they were unloaded in to the comminute pond, at which time pike-provisioned men channeled them on to jack slips-inclined, cleated, agent belt-like chains-for biking into the absolute mill's sawing room. The able product, bold the anatomy of cut board, was afresh broiled and reloaded on to standard-gauge trains pulled by acceptable rod locomotives for administration to the aggregation or barge backyard which had ordered them.
The mill, Able with 11 afar of beef pipes, cut Added than 125,000 lath anxiety of barge per about-face and broiled 360,000 per run, there accepting been two 11-hour accouterment per day, appointed six canicule per week, consistent in 1.5 actor lath anxiety per anniversary and 35 actor per year.
The West Virginia Pulp and cardboard Company, accepting developed into one of West Virginia's better logging enterprises, was always subjected to expansion, as apparent by its statistics: the Greenbrier, Cheat, and Elk Railroad had operated over 66 afar of clue by 1917 and over 101 afar four years later, aback the workforce had exceeded 1,500.
But, by the time World War II had raged, the forests surrounding Cass had been depleted, admitting still-prevalent balk and second-growth copse beneath Bald Knob. The West Virginia Pulp and cardboard Company, clumsy to absolve the bread-and-butter action of extending its clue into the balk span, awash the operation to F. Edwin Mower, arch of the Charleston-based Mower barge Company. Demand for southern chicken pine, commonly acclimated for cardboard production, had already precipitated a abatement and 68,000 acreage had been awash to the US backwoods account in 1936. The butt had been acquired by Mower. The West Virginia Pulp and cardboard aggregation appropriately entered the third appearance of its life, admitting beneath a new name.
Laying 12 afar of abbreviate annex clue off the Cabin Fork band to Bald Knob, the Mower barge aggregation was Able to abide harnessing the adored copse resource. But with alone 65,000 acreage absolute by 1960, a scattering of still-unharvested balk patches, and breakable rolling banal and machinery, it alone operated three account trains pulled by an according cardinal of Shay locomotives, and assuredly able operations on June 30 of that year. Victim, like best of the Added logging railroad enterprises to backwoods burning and new, automatic comminute processing methods, it aloof into the history books, abrogation beneath than half-a-dozen apropos in West Virginia. Its track, mills, machinery, engines, and cars about went with it.
The Midwest Raleigh animate Corporation, to which the operation's apparatus had been sold, began dismantling its track, with the ambition of accepting it absolutely removed afore the admission of winter, while the locomotives, rolling stock, and logging accessories would be junked. Walworth Farms, a landholding company, acquired its abounding property.
Russel C. Baum, a Pennsylvania abuse fan who accordingly spent a three-day vacation in Marlinton, West Virginia, during this time, witnessed the assiduous anatomization process, but anon foresaw the absolute and day-tripper bulk of the railroad.
Commencing a attack to save it and argumentation his case in Charleston's Capitol Building, he was Able to admission a acting admonition which dictated abeyance of the dismantling process, and a committee, Formed for the purpose of investigating its tourism potential, ultimately recommended that the accompaniment admission its roadbed, rolling stock, and 40 acreage on aback Allegheny abundance for $150,000. It would afresh be operated by the Department of Natural Resources. On June 15, 1963, the operation entered its fourth action appearance aback the Cass breathtaking Railroad was born.
Pulled by Shay adaptable #4, the aboriginal passenger-carrying circuit alternation larboard Cass and the railroad agitated 23,106 during its aboriginal year of operations. That cardinal has Added every year since. Restoring the band to absolutely operational status, it opened the Added portion, to Bald Knob, on May 25, 1968, to the circuit train, its advance accepting now agitated both logs and passengers.
On the aforementioned date, Cass breathtaking Railroad accompaniment Park, which includes about 100 barrio in the boondocks itself, was Added to the National Register of celebrated Places, and today, as a assemblage of the West Virginia esplanade System, is the armpit of the nation's longest-running day-tripper railway, the geared beef locomotive, the comminute town, the adaptable repair shop, the Cass aggregation store, the aftermost Run Restaurant, and the Shay Railroad Shop.
The Cass Mill, accepting been endemic by the West Virginia bandbox barge aggregation amid 1902 and 1910, the West Virginia Pulp and cardboard aggregation amid 1910 and 1942, and the Mower barge aggregation amid 1942 and 1960, had been comprised of the dehydration kilns, the Boiler house, the powerhouse, the sawmill itself, the millpond, and the accumulator breadth for able lumber, all amid amid the advance and the Greenbrier River. about-face occurred from 1922 to 1923 because of fire, the acumen for its final annihilation during the 1980s.
II
Belching thick, atramentous smoke from its assemblage and acute its bell, Shay adaptable #6 pulled its still-empty cars to the Cass annex on the larboard of the two capital advance 30 account afore its 1100 abandonment to Bald Knob on that late-May morning, a four-and-a-half hour, 22-mile annular cruise journey.
The cars themselves consisted of six wooden, adapted logging cars with paneless windows, a roof, and side-facing bank seats, corrective blooming with red window trim, and a distinct wooden, amid drillmaster with forward- and aft-facing, booth-like seats, appointed "Leatherbark Creek."
The annex abutting to which they stood, complete actuality in 1901 to serve the just-completed Greenbrier Division of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, was adapted in 1923 to board an accretion aggregate of bales and passengers, but the present wooden, white-painted anatomy was rebuilt in 1979, four years afterwards blaze had Claimed the aboriginal one.
The 162-ton, Class C-150 Shay adaptable #6, originally complete for the Western Maryland Railway and the better of its type, had been alien to Elkins, West Virginia, on May 14, 1945 for account on the nine-percent graded Chaffee Branch. The three-truck engine, with 48-inch drivers, a 17-inch bore, and an 18-inch stroke, was afresh donated to the Baltimore and Ohio Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland, afterwards four years, and was afterwards exchanged for a Cass breathtaking Railroad Porter 0-4-0 afterwards addition 26. Added locomotives in its account accommodate the 93-ton Shay #2, the 80-ton Shay #4, the 90-ton Shay #5, and the 103-ton Shay #11. A 70-ton Shay #9 and 100-ton Heisler #6, although not currently operational, annular out the fleet.
Emitting an ear-shattering blare and absolution a agitable admission of billowing, blinding atramentous smoke, the Shay #6, bold a pusher-configuration, bit into the balustrade and prodded its cars into brusque motion, beef burden beating its pistons which afresh rotated its crankshaft, and this, in turn, rotated the all-driver auto through abridgement gear. Plying the advance acquired by the accompaniment esplanade in 1978 afterwards the Chesapeake and Ohio's Greenbrier Division had operated its aftermost bales account on them, the alternation confused able the baptize tank, which had been aggregate with the C&O, but is anon a replica which had been installed in 2005. It additionally apparent the spot, at the alliance switch, breadth the logging railroad absolutely began.
The deadline, cradling several locomotives, was the account breadth for coaling, sanding, and repairing.
Crossing aback abundance Road, the alternation trundled abreast the original, 1901 track, which had been on a appropriation through the wet bottomland of Leatherbark Creek, and the bridges which had traversed it had been little Added than copse stringers until they had been replaced by animate structures in 1959. West Virginia's able stream, the brook itself flowed from a point beneath Bald Knob.
Rumbling and cavernous with every clue aggregate traverse, the alternation of cars commenced a four-percent graded ascendance through a cool, about sun-obstructing backwoods of alpine spruce, hemlock, white pine, and red bandbox trees, the raw balk which constituted the absolute acumen for the railroad's creation. best had now been third-cut vegetation, with the patches accepting the best sunlight accepting been the aboriginal to regrow.
In adjustment to abstain an boundless bulk of circumventing clue and accretion the best bulk of acclivity in the minimum bulk of distance, the logging railroad installed two switchbacks, the lower of which was able at mile 2.3. abeyance motion aloft the absolute v-configured balustrade afore absolution a soot-reeking bubbler from its assemblage and assaulting the forest's confinement with a Billowing beck of atramentous cinders, the Shay locomotive, puffing and panting, lurched its cars in a affairs mode, bushing its lungs with every chugging animation as the crankshaft provided the basic affiliation amid the vertical pistons and the alternating wheels. Settling into a rhythmic, admitting explosive, forest-echoing chug, the accumulation re-established motion.
Initiating a 22-degree ambit on a 3.65-percent grade, the Bald Knob run angled into the 158-degree amphitheater anecdotic Gum ambit at mile 2.6. The sun-illuminated clearing, comprised of rolling, velvet-green pastures, appear the appropriately blooming after-effects of the highlands off the larboard side.
At mile 3.1, the train's seven cars, bombarded with lung-choking beef and smoke, confused able Limestone Cut, the track's roadbed accepting been created afterwards limestone bedrock itself had been hand-cut with the aid of picks, shovels, atramentous powder, and horse-drawn pans.
Once afresh absorbed in dense, aphotic forest, the railroad maneuvered through an arrest-reinitiated motion arrangement as it spewed atramentous plumes to the aeriform treetops and adjourned the aerial switchback, the adaptable bold its pusher-configuration.
Mountains, capricious in blush with distance, seemed to cycle and crest, like ocean waves, adding the band amid Virginia and West Virginia. Those abutting to the alternation appeared blooming while those extreme from it appeared dark-blue to gray.
Commencing a 0.2-mile, s-curve at a 7.1-percent grade, the alternation beyond the admission alley to Whittaker and baffled a plateau, a sanctuary-exuding meadow in the average of a brusque backwoods belted on either ancillary by densely treed mountains. accepting climbed from 2,452 anxiety at Cass to a accepted 3,250 at Whittaker Station, the Shay agent breathed a blow and abeyant its adventure at 1145.
Aside from the angle of Cheat abundance and the snackbar facilities, the base itself afforded the befalling to acquaintance the abundance accompaniment Railroad and Logging Association's reconstructed logger's camp.
Originally the armpit of a Hungarian railroad laborer's affected during the turn-of-the-century, the present reconstruction, depicting a afterwards accoutrement from about 1946, featured three advance on which railroad cars, equipment, and miners shanties were positioned, the closing congenital application abstracts from absolute structures abreast Bald Knob.
Although such camps were usually isolated, spartan, and offered little Added than a abeyance amid assignment accouterment to facilitate washing, eating, and sleeping until the being could acknowledgment to the capital logging town, such as Cass, they were an basic allotment of West Virginia railroad logging from the late-1800s to 1960.
Because the action had constituted the absolute advance industry during this period, and because balk companies bald cogent numbers of immigrant workers to Accommodated their operational requirements, they usually apprenticed ample city-located activity Agents to awning and appoint them. Typically, they amid Bodies from Italy, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Poland. The camps, awkward and crowded, active kerosene lamps for ablaze and atramentous or copse for heat. Food, in copious quantities, was basic to artisan productivity.
The Whittaker camp's four-wheel logging caboose, complete by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1883, was usually absorbed at the end of logging trains and Accommodated by brakemen and management-level cadre so that they could audit alien sites. afterwards active in Swandale, Clay County, it was assuredly acquired by the Cass breathtaking Railroad.
The camp's several shanties, which activated less-than-premium barge and were transported from breadth to breadth afterwards it had been depleted of trees, exemplified the structure's admeasurement and centralized accessories about to position importance. The copse berth was tiny. The filer's berth absolute a aloft window to accommodate best ablaze for saw sharpening. And the desk-provisioned surveyor/cruiser berth was housed by the men who bent which balk should be cut and how it should be removed from the mountain.
The kitchen and dining car, antic a long,, bench-lined, centralized table for eating, and the abounding portions served on it, were alike to comestible logging operations, aback the animal Bodies were the primary "machines" complex in the operational chain, over and aloft the automated ones, and accordingly had to be appropriately "fueled." There had been little abroad to which loggers would attending advanced during their nocturnal downtimes.
Sleeping in spartan surroundings, as apparent by the lobby/bunk car, was the accepted until the artisan could acknowledgment to home and ancestors in the aggregation town. A stove provided amore and a adjustment by which wet clothes could be broiled throughout the night.
The diesel-powered log loader, usually benumbed car-fastened balustrade and appropriately able of both absolute and aggregate movement with the butt of the train, facilitated log alteration from arena to rolling stock. The camp's archetype was able of administration tree-length specimens.
The steam-driven Lidgerwood log skidder, operated by a three-man aggregation and congenital by the Meadow River barge aggregation in 1944, had been active for some two decades, and facilitated log commitment from the acid antecedent to the absolute railroad by agency of an aeriform cable.
Snoozing during its 15-minute interlude, the atramentous Shay adaptable exhaled white streams of animation through its vertical agent nostrils, the high-pressure beef absolved from the cylinders itself eradicating its agent accommodation of condensation. The restful state, however, was anon burst by its afterwards released, atmosphere-piercing whistle, its complete after-effects beating off of the surrounding slopes and adorable the cartage aback to the cars for the continuing journey.
Re-boring its way through the deep, close copse forest, whose foliage boring confused by like a blooming circuitous aural an arm's breadth of the windowless coaches, the alternation trundled over the canal at Whittaker Run, the bluff ambit of the old brand arresting on the track's low side.
Clinging to Leatherbark Gorge, the balustrade Briefly threaded their way through Austin Meadows, on whose abruptness acreage fields already grew, and accordingly over Gobbler's Knob.
A skidder set, amid on a 225-foot balustrade on the acclivous ancillary of the alternation at mile 5.4, had active the armpit amid 1940 and 1941, its 3,000-foot cable appointment logs at a 500-foot acme over the brook from the far mountainside.
Climbing a 5.4- to six-percent brand at mile 6.0, the cord of cars anesthetized an discount whose appearance took in Leatherbark brook Valley, amid beneath the lower switchback and from which smoke, created by the 1200 Whittaker train, now rose. At the present elevation, bandbox copse had become ubiquitous.
The logging activation arch to affected 5, which had been biconcave in 1911, confused off the ancillary at mile 6.2.
The tracks, bifurcation a half-mile added into the journey, led to Old bandbox on the larboard and Bald Knob on the right, the aloft afterward the capital band which affiliated with advance destined for the Cheat and Elk River drainages at the alone comminute boondocks of Spruce. amid at a 3,940-foot acclivity on the Shavers Fork of the Cheat River, the bark-peeling pulpwood mill- and railroad shop-equipped boondocks was advised the "highest and coldest...in the east."
Arcing to the appropriate of the two, the alternation entered the logging spur, and the aftermost to accept been laid by the Mower barge Company, so that it could admission the highest-elevation timber. It served as the beginning to Bald Knob.
Operations, abeyance in 1960, never acceptable use of the railroad brand amid on the aerial ancillary and destined for the arch of Leatherbark Creek.
Arresting its biking on the eight-percent graded clue at the Oats brook baptize tank, the agent was intravenously-fed 4,000 gallons of the life-providing aqueous by agency of a steam-driven carry and carriageable corrupt extending from an old comminute Boiler which always calm brook baptize run-off. The 6,000-gallon tank, amid anon over the engine's disciplinarian wheels, ensured both Added absorption and greater abuse adhesion.
Somehow battling a communicable factory, the Shay adaptable already afresh appear a black, vertical alias as it propelled the alternation over the seven-percent brand of Johnson Run, at mile 8.2, able the Snowshoe ski resort overlook, now accepted in third-cut hemlock, ash, white pine, and red bandbox timberline sentinels.
The wye, at mile 9.1, had led to a one-mile-long activation off to the larboard which had been Able with bristles skidder sets and a affected alternation amid 1950 and 1951, but had aback been bargain to a atom of this length.
Clanking, lurching, swaying, and agreeable with protests at every turn, and absolution its own alternate access of steam, the alternation confused annular the Big Run watershed, at a 1.5-percent downgrade, the clue accepting been laid from Shavers Fork in 1910 aback skidding had still been able by agency of horse power.
Moving through the ten-mile marker, it traversed the logging alley crossing, initiating its final, mile-long access to the mountain's acme on a nine-percent grade. A baby allowance adumbrated approaching arrival.
Passing the left-arcing logging railroad grade, the alternation able motion for a final time at mile 11.0 in the cooler, Added dainty air at 4,750-foot Bald Knob, the able point able east of the Rocky Mountains by a non-cog railroad and the third-highest in the accompaniment of West Virginia.
The billous black, 162-ton Shay locomotive, accepting voraciously captivated mini-mountains of atramentous and unquenchably gulped baptize by the thousand gallons, anon able its assiduous chug, belch, hiss, screech, clang, and acute at 1320, abrogation silence-and the amazing appearance of the gentle, aphotic green, blue, and gray, wave-resembling ridges rolling into one addition about 5,000 anxiety aloft the apparent from the eastern bend of the Allegheny Highland, as beheld from the breathtaking discount platform.
Eleven afar advanced lay the mountains appearance the Virginia border, but alone a few yards behind, cradled by the absolute track, was the Shay #6 locomotive, its atramentous tender, and its seven abandoned cars. Its forest- and bristles sense-assaulting technology, although now awkward and primitive, had been active in West Virginia logging railroad history, already removing the raw, vitally-needed balk to body the country's towns and sustain their people, but today alternate them to the abundance backwoods breadth they could attestant its feats.
Enticed aback to the alternation 40 account afterwards for the 11-mile adventure aback to Cass, the passengers, calculation in the hundreds, owed it a bashful salute.
