While looking for something else, I came across some material on the New York Central line from Charleston, W.Va. to Hitop.

This was a former shortline that was merged into the NYC, and connected with the parent line on the former Kanawha & Michigan line in Charleston. The station in Charleston was a Baltimore & Ohio (formerly Coal & Coke) facility jointly used by B&O (route to Grafton, with interchange with Buffalo Creek & Gauley at Dundon), NYC (from Parkersburg to Rainelle, W.Va.), and Virginian Railway (trackage rights operation on NYC from West Deepwater to Charleston).

The line to Hitop paralleled the B&O up the Elk River, crossing the B&O at a diamond protected by a tilting target signal at Blue Creek, W.Va. It was noted for having a Budd RDC providing a school bus service on the route in an era before there were any decent roads. This arrangement went back to the 1920s; the Budd car replaced an older and unreliable doodlebug that was later converted to some sort of inspection or clearance car.

http://www.mywvhome.com/fifties/beeliner.html

http://hitopbranchmodelrr.com/blog/2013 ... -schoolbus

A model builder has an interest in this little line:

http://hitopbranchmodelrr.com/history-o ... secondary/

http://hitopbranchmodelrr.com/grid/

And some more on this line, the former Kanawha & West Virginia:

http://wvncrails.weebly.com/kanawha-and ... lroad.html

Finally, just a couple of cool sites with information on other railroads and features of West Virginia:

http://wvncrails.weebly.com/west-virginia.html

http://wvrails.net/

http://www.mywvhome.com/

Enjoy. . .

Imagine, taking a train to school every day through a rural area. How cool would that have been.
No, "walked 10 miles through snow to get to school" stories when you're much older, though...

Heh, heh, heh, I like that. . .

Equally interesting to contemplate that this was a carrier--NYC--that one normally would not associate with the Mountain State--but it did run here!

Sadly the Charleston "Union Station" was demolished for a highway, but the freight house survives and is in use as a farmers' market. Interestingly, the last time I saw it it still had its tracks installed, in pavement, and there was still a switch connecting this trackage to an active (NS) line! I could just imagine refrigerator cars with produce being delivered there again. . .and with that track still there, it could happen!

http://www.capitolmarket.net/

http://www.capitolmarket.net/our-story

http://www.capitolmarket.net/our-bragging-rights

I think this image is miscaptioned; it looks more like a passenger facility, but it also looks like the freight house is in the background behind it.

http://www.capitolmarket.net/sites/defa ... oric_0.jpg

In April, my daughter's 2nd grade class from Forest Hills School District, near Johnstown, is taking a field trip to Altoona, on Amtrak's Pennsylvanian from Johnstown, up over Horseshoe Curve, and down into Altoona. It think after that they go to a ballgame at curve park then back to school. That seems like a way cool field trip.....hopefully they'll get some good rail history while on the train......

When I was a boy we wound up "taking a train to school every day through a rural area", and we were grateful for it!

Context is everything.

There were a couple of places here in Pa. where kids rode the train to school. The Reading had a gas-electric run from Reading to Slatington that was scheduled to carry students from northern Berks and southern Lehigh counties to the high school in Slatington. There was a trailer coach that was designated for the students, and the morning train made a stop at a stairway that led up to the street a short distance from the school. In the afternoon, the kids had to walk a couple of blocks to the station. This train lasted until after World War II when school buses took over. Folks who rode the Berksy to school held regular reunions until recently at the WK&S at Kempton, riding over a portion of the line they once traveled every day.

Out in the northwestern part of the state, the Clarion River Railway had an old boxcar fitted with seats that brought students from several remote hamlets out to a highway crossing where they then boarded a bus. When the road's Climax was not used on the train, a Brookville gasoline railtruck pulled the "coach."

Since the early 1980s or so, school trains have operated daily to and from the Marsh Academy in New Romney during the school year on the miniature Romney, Hythe, & Dymchurch Railway in Kent, England (albeit usually with 1980s-built diesels instead of the miniature steam Pacifics the line is renown for).

Some day students at the George School in Bucks County commuted from Fox Chase and Huntington Valley on the Reading Newtown Branch until schedules were cut back in the late sixties.

The PRR's gas car which ran between Red Bank on the New York and Long Branch to Trenton on the Main Line by way of Sea Girt, Jamesburg and Monmouth Jct lasted as long as it did because Trenton Catholic High School served as the parochial high school for the Catholic Diocese in Freehold and the students were the primary passengers. The story is that the railroad finally offered to buy a bus and pay the drivers' wages in order to induce the schools to drop their opposition to the discontinuance.

GME

Somebody in West Virginia is supposedly lifting 105 Dudley rail. It must be one of those lines.

As of six years ago the Radebuel-Radeburg railway outside of Dresden (one of the stops for the Trains Magazine Germany/Austria tour in October), ran a steam-powered school train very early in the morning. Departed Radebuel around 0500 as a deadhead move to Radeburg to return live, but one could buy a ticket Northbound for the roundtrip, and pretty much have the train to themselves outbound. Students were pretty much high school age, so not a rowdy bunch. I don't know if they still run the school train, but I very much enjoyed riding this narrow-gauge line (smaller than Meter, like around 2', perhaps 900 mm?). I can tell you from trying that the line is a very hard chase, very urban at the Radebuel end, and unless they make all the stops, a fairly quick trip.