I Love This Place

I Love this Place

FOLLOWING THE WW RAILROAD

by Colleen Nelson

I’m standing on the berm of a road that once bridged a train track at the edge of the Greene County line.

Jim Weinshenker is in the forest below me, gesturing to the flat land around him, choked with underbrush and trees. “The train tracks ran right through here and the water tower was back there.” He points behind him where the houses of West Union form a village. “See that white marker? That’s the county line. The tracks went along there into Washington County and down to Dunns Station.”

It’s a sunny Saturday morning and Jim is on his way to the Greene County Historical Society Museum to work on its awesome artifacts from the glory days of the Waynesburg and Washington Railroad. The old passenger car is being readied for restoration and engine number 4 – Old Waynie – is about to be cleaned and repainted. Jim took the back roads from his home in Washington today to help me explore the WW Railroad, a country road that runs from Sycamore north to West Union. Narrow gauge tracks three feet apart once ran alongside it, from 1877 until workers removed them in 1978. Jim has written two books about this bit of steam-powered history and knows where every whistle stop, vanished trestle and abandoned station once stood. I’ve read his books and looked at every old photo. Now, staring into the forest, I imagine the image of that wooden water tank superimposed over the greenery and say “Wow!”

Jim says “Wow!” too when I show him the old rails that I found the first time I drove from Sycamore, through Swarts - where I rightly guessed which old building was once a train station - up to the Presbyterian Church that sits on this side road that is West Union. “I didn’t know they were here!” he says, pushing the weeds aside to get a better look. “The station sat right here – look you can still see the rail bed. I’m going to have to find who owns them – it would be great to have these at the museum!”

Those rails are old, but not as old as the rail bed they now lay beside. Over the years rails and ties were upgraded and replaced, trestles went from wood to steel and some stations became elaborate affairs where passengers waited to ride from these stops in Greene County to the wide world outside.

It was a dream come true for John Day of Carmichaels who left home to become a self-made man of the post-Civil War era. His fascination with the trains that were transforming America led him to write a letter to friends at home in 1874 challenging them to think beyond the muddy roads that isolated their goods and services from the outside world. Why not build a railroad to Washington, where lines lead to Pittsburgh and beyond? He volunteered to do it himself if the $150,000 bond could be raised.

It was an idea whose time had come.

Larry Koehler and Morgan Gayvert’s 2002 book Three Feet on the Panhandle captures some of the hustle and frenzy of the next three years as investors haggled, bonds were sold, right of ways were dickered over and residents lobbied to get the route to go through their back yards – or not. Surveyors and engineers were brought in to suss out the land with its winding valleys that lead to the watershed that separates the counties. Arguments arose over which villages between Washington and Waynesburg would win the right of way. The West Union Presbyterian Church became the half way place for meeting with bondholders and businessmen who were tallying the railroad stock that needed to be sold or spoken for to allow the state to grant permission to draw up the corporate charter. Meetings became heated as investors negotiated and voted on the direction the line would take. The farmers and businessmen of Nineveh and Prosperity, having lost their bid to have the route go their way through Old Concord, left in a huff to build a track of their own. But like many paper railroads of its day, it never left the drawing board.

The WW Railroad charter of incorporation was signed with great fanfare on May 18, 1875 and by July, 150 men were hard at work grading the land with mule drawn drags. By October, tie timbers were selling for 21 cents a tie with many being cut on the spot by farmers as the right of way came through their land. Laying the tracks started in Washington with a construction train, General Greene, running three flatcars to bring raw materials that would carry the train forward as the 30 pound per yard iron rail from Wheeling was laid. Work knocked off for the winter then picked up again in spring for two seasons. There were trestles to be built over creeks and ravines and bends to be graded as the railroad climbed to its highest elevation five miles from Washington, then dropped to Ten Mile Creek, then another climb, including a 35 degree horseshoe bend to West Union. By September 10, 1877, track had been laid to the Greene County line and by October 24, it was two and a half miles from Waynesburg. The golden spike was driven on November 1 at Buchanan Station in West Waynesburg and the second engine, General Washington, made the first run of 28 winding miles between the two county seats. Life would never be the same! Runs started at 5:30 a.m. and passengers could expect to be in Washington within the hour, give or take a washed out trestle or December snowstorm. For more than fifty years, steam was how things rolled in Greene County. But the paved roads of the 1920s brought automotive competition that couldn’t be beat and the Great Depression brought the economy to its knees. The last passenger ride was taken July 6, 1929 and the last freight train left the station in 1933.

I have my Washington County road map with me and most of the old whistle stops from Dunn’s Station to the grand old brick station in Washington are still marked. But that’s an adventure for another day.

Today Jim and I leave West Union Church and its coveted old rails and drive down to Deer Lick, at the bottom of the grade that ends in Bates Fork Valley, past miniature horses grazing in the field and glimpses of the rail bed making a dotted line against the hillside. We stop to see where the track cut across the road and where the Deer Lick Station once hugged the edge of the creek. Then on to Iams Station, a gaunt two-story structure standing in the field beside Iams Station Road, which jumps the hill to catch up with Rt. 18 a mile before Nineveh. We get out and eyeball what’s left of the overhangs that were once a passenger platform, with loading docks and a spur of track running behind. Now it is a shed for cattle, its roof slats showing through torn metal sheeting, but still standing as straight as it did when it welcomed farmers with their loaded wagons and neighbors heading to Washington to shop, go to school or take another train to Pittsburgh. Behind us the broad valley stretches to the lovely little village of Swarts. “The Swarts Depot sat here on the bottom,” Jim tells me. At some point it was moved to the edge of the road, given its own foundation and is now the best-tended artifact on the road.

We make one last stop at the post office in Sycamore, where another iron horse – a motorcycle, rearing on its anchored back axle, guards both a mailbox and the site of the Sycamore Station. Nothing remains but Jim’s collection of old photos showing the lumber yard, the general store and the tracks running in front of the front porch of station master Jake Weaver’s house. I do my best to superimpose them over the buildings that stand there now.

“The loading dock was over there and his general store sat over there and lumber was loaded over there,” Jim says helpfully pointing in all directions. Below us the tracks would have crossed what is now Route 18 and made a lazy curve to the left edge of WW Railroad, then on up Bate’s Fork to Swarts. I can almost see it. “You had to buy your tickets at the general store,” Jim tells me, then heads to the museum where old Waynie awaits. He’ll pass Reeces Mill and Buchannan stations on the three miles it takes to get to Waynesburg on this last stretch of old rail bed that Norfolk And Southern tracks now follow on their way to Bailey Mine in Enon. And I’ll be heading home, my head swimming with images of what life was like back in the day when steam engines ruled, and a phone full of photos of what it looks like now.