Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway
The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway. The original Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway built several massive engineering works, including the Wabash Terminal in downtown Pittsburgh, damaged by two fires in 1946 and demolished in 1953. The Wabash Bridge over the Monongahela River into Pittsburgh was torn down in 1948, and on December 27, 2004, the Wabash Tunnel just southwest of the bridge opened as a high occupancy vehicle roadway through Mount Washington. As of January 2020 the two piers of the long-gone Wabash Bridge remain standing. The line also had a branch to West End, Pennsylvania, that was abandoned in 2011, and a branch to West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, known as the Mifflin Branch. And it also has a small industrial branch located near Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania. At the end of 1960 P&WV operated of road on of track; that year it reported 439 million net ton-miles of revenue freight. History Gould system: 1901 to 1908 Around 1900 George J. Gould was assembling railroads to create a transcontinental system. The Western Pacific Railway, Denver and Rio Grande Railroad and Missouri Pacific Railroad formed the line from the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco to the Mississippi River at St. Louis (completed in 1909). Past St. Louis, Gould acquired the Wabash Railroad to Toledo. On February 1, 1901, Gould, along with Joseph Ramsey, Jr., of the Wabash and others, formed the Pittsburgh-Toledo Syndicate, a syndicate intending to extend the system to Pittsburgh. The next month, the syndicate bought the Pittsburgh and Mansfield Railroad, an unbuilt line with a charter to build into downtown Pittsburgh. By May 1 the syndicate gained control of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad, extending the system from Toledo southeast to Zanesville, Ohio, and Wheeling, West Virginia. The extension to Pittsburgh was chartered in three parts—the Cross Creek Railroad April 23, 1900, in Ohio, Pittsburgh, Toledo and Western Railroad April 3, 1901, in West Virginia, and Pittsburgh, Carnegie and Western Railroad July 17, 1901, in Pennsylvania. Work on the line, branching off the P&WV's line to Wheeling at Pittsburgh Junction, Ohio, began June 14, 1901. On May 7, 1904, the three companies were consolidated into the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, to which all the properties of the syndicate (including the W&LE) were transferred. The