History of the Blue Ridge Mountain Railroad

In the 1870s, narrow gauge fever had reached the United States from the UK. Infact, there was even a plan to build a 3ft railroad from coast to coast. A more realistic scheme was founded in 1982 by a group of men from Baltimore, who wanted to built an equivalent of the Rio Grande Southern across the Appalachian mountains. To kill two birds with one stone, the railroad was to tap into the logging and mining market in West Virginia as well as being a common carrier.

 

The following year, work had started and a line was built from Marlinton in Pocahontas to Cowen in Webster. To make the first stage of the railroad sustainable, It connected the Chesapeake & Ohio (seen in blue on the map) with the Baltimore & Ohio (seen in red), which were standard gauge lines.

The line opened in June 1984 with a special passenger train, which ran well except for one minor derailment of the engines poney truck.

Shays number 3 & 1 storm into Marlinton Shays number 3 & 1 storm into Marlinton

 In 1891 a company named the Pocahontas Lumber Co. constructed a railroad to connect with the BRMRR so they could transport the logs to a sawmill at Marlinton. The Blue Ridge Mountain RR had no problem with this as they could charge for running rights. However they soon became fed up of the slow speeds of the geared engineds getting in the way of regular trains. So they decided to ban any engines of a top speed under 15mph to run on the main line. The PLCo. cleared up it's act and bought some rod engines second hand. This lead to some interesting operations of trains meeting to exchange loaded log cars with empty ones.

By 1891, the Pocahontas Lumber Co. was operating smoothly and had two main branches shown on the map in yellow. Futher track is thought to have existed but it's location is unknown.

No 27, a rod engine of the PLCo. No 27, a rod engine of the PLCo.

In 1898, shipping goods on the Blue Ridge Mountain Railroad was seen very appealing to the local businesses. So much so that funds were raised to build a railroad to Warwick branching off the main line at Campbelltown. This was completed by October and regular freight trains  and the odd passenger service ran on it.

 

Another feature of the Blue Ridge Mountain system was the branchline to Dogway. The branch was built to serve the coal mines in the area, with the main one at Dogway. There are no records of when construction was completed, but the branch was used right up to the end of the railroads life. In the final years, diesels were used to move coal to Marlinton and Cowen, with the caboose and the occasional freight car included to handle the rest of the traffic.