CSX's Mountain Subdivision is a historic piece of railroad between Grafton, West Virginia, and Cumberland, Maryland. Originally constructed in the mid-1850's as the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's mainline between Baltimore, Maryland, and Wheeling, West Virginia, the present day Mountain Subdivision or the West End of the Cumberland Division as the B&O referred to it, was hailed as a magnificent achievement with its steep grades and many bridges and tunnels. Following the Civil War the traffic level on the B&O's West End soared, resulting in the line being expanded from a single track main to two tracks by the late 1880s. During this same time period the West End became an important link in the B&O's Gateway mainline between Cumberland, Maryland, and St. Louis, Missouri. The next major expansion on the railroad took place some thirty years later between 1910 and 1913 - an event which would give the West End much of the character it still proudly claims today.
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Advances in locomotive design led to the creation of the mallet steam locomotive - in truth, two engines in the same frame - which brought about this era of reconstruction on the B&O. The added power of a mallet led to a drastic increase in train length which caused many operating plans to be quite literally thrown out the cab window. Also taking place during this time period was a major increase in the line's traffic, which prompted the B&O to also build a third track over several critical areas of the West End, mainly the helper grades. Through the next half a century the West End would become a heavily used section of railroad with many movements of all types of freight and passenger service. As a consequence, the West End was one of the first lines on the Baltimore and Ohio to dieselize. The arrival of several new sets of EMD F-7s at M&K Junction in 1949 marked the beginning of the end for the age of steam locomotives, rendering much of the West End's physical plant surplus. Unfortunately the traffic "boom" soon came to an end in the early 1960s and levels followed a steady downward slide which would last over thirty years. By 1973 the third track had been taken up on most portions of the West End and the number of helpers sets stationed at M&K Junction, Keyser and Hardman for the major grades had also been reduced. The final act in the West End's "fall from grace" occurred in the summer of 1985 when Chessie / CSX announced the severing of the St. Louis line as a main route. A section of the Gateway route between Clarksburg, West Virginia, and Cincinnati, Ohio, would be abandoned, resulting in all through trains being re-routed north over Sand Patch. This traffic loss was staggering with all manifests, trailer jets and extra movements virtually vanishing overnight. The remaining trains were almost entirely coal drags and empties moving between the coal fields around the Grafton / Cowen region and Cumberland.
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Regular freight traffic was almost non existant west of Luke, MD, and those freight trains which did run between Grafton and Cumberland were often irregular and termed extra movements. An additional blow came in August of 1986 when all helper dispatching and fueling jobs were moved from M&K Junction to Grafton, bringing to end an era which had began more than seventy years before with the B&O. In the following years, the situation worsened as online traffic declined with the coal market, hitting a low point in the late 1980's and early 1990's, resulting in rumors that a portion of the Mountain Subdivision would be abandoned in the near future. However, every cloud has a mainline routing and the Mountain Subdivision's traffic has began to bounce back from the losses of the earlier years. Unfortunately this marginal increase in traffic in the late 1990s did not materialize soon enough to prevent CSX from gradually beginning to wear away the West End's B&O character. In 1996 CSX began "modernizing" the Mountain's operations by preparing to close the remaining active towers on the line. The first to go was AM Tower at Altamont, MD, which was closed in 1996, followed two years later by Q Tower at Hardman. In both cases, the "CI" Dispatcher in Jacksonsville, Florida, took over the sections of railroad. On the flip side of this modernization and partly because of it, the number of trains moving over the West End continued to steadily increase causing CSX to re-examine its plans for the line in the past few years. Currently, two daily mixed freights added in 1987 transverse the line, Q316 (eastbound) and Q317 (westbound), in addition to numerous coal drags and empty movements. With the Conrail Split on June 1st 1999, the West End received additional traffic in the form of hopper trains running between the MGA Mine District based in Newell, Pennyslvania, and the eastern seaboard, along with additional coal moving from the Cowen fields to the northeast. As a result of this new traffic and recent improvements to the subdivision, CSX has shown it intends to keep the B&O's West End as a coal mainline well into the new millenium.
The following pages break
the subdivision down into different sections between the listed locations.
The line between GN Tower at Grafton and Newburg.
[ Western Approach ]
The line between Newburg and Blaser.
[ Newburg Grade ]
The line between Blaser and Rowlesburg.
[ Cheat River Grade ]
The small yard and helper station at M&K Junction.
[ M&K Junction ]
The line between Rowlesburg and Terra Alta.
[ Cranberry Grade ]
The line between Terra Alta and Altamont.
[ The Glades ]
The line between Altamont and Piedmont.
[ 17 Mile Grade ]
The line between Piedmont and Cumberland.
[ Eastern Approach ]
Information on the current CSX operations over the Mountain Subdivision.
A detailed map of the Mountain Subdivision.
An essay on the construction
of the West End.
Special Feature: Take a look back at the disastrous Cheat River flood which ravaged the West End and neighboring communities.
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Copyright 1998-2002 © Northern WV's Railroads
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