A Day at Cass Scenic Railroad State Park

Hi. My name is Cody Etu. I am 17.

I’m here in the mountains of West Virginia with my parents and grandparents.

I’m finding out quickly there is a lot to see and do in this state.

Yesterday we toured the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank.

Heck, just a couple minutes away are a bunch of historic steam locomotives in a place called the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park.

Get out your West Virginia map and locate Lewisburg in the southeast corner. Trace your finger up Route 219. Just about two inches north you’ll see the town of Cass.

When dad pulled into the place I thought we were pulling into an old lumber town.

There’s the Cass Depot, built to look like it survived from the 1920’s.

Then there is the Company Store, because this was once a company-owned lumber mill town, the Last Run Restaurant, and the Shay Railroad Gift Shop.

First thing my family likes to do is go for a ride, so we booked ourselves on the first locomotive going up into the mountains to Whittaker Station, an old lumber outpost.

Looking over dad’s shoulder it looked like he was putting down $22 for the adults and $16 for me. I was grateful because, of course, I didn’t think to bring any money.

The train ride took a couple of hours, and it was a beautiful sight seeing the black coal smoke puffing out of the smoke stack and the white steam coming from the air horn.

The train lumbered and pulled us tourists up into the mountains, stopping once to switch to another track. It made a beautiful, earthy sound, the grandpa said, "That’s the way a locomotive ought to sound."

You are looking into forest all the way up and back, and we saw some deer and were watching for other critters. At Whittaker station there is a lot of old lumber handling equipment that rode the rails.

When the tour guide was explaining how hard it used to be to get 14-foot cut trees down from the tops of the mountains, dad leaned over to me and said, "Just be lucky you weren’t doing that job in nineteen hundred."

I took a picture while we were on the train, and I show it here.

When we got back to camp, we took another tour that took us into the locomotive repair shop.

Grandpa was beside himself because he likes things that are mechanical. Up above us in the ceiling was a 50-ton crane. On a workbench was a vice so big it could hold a car frame.

When you are working on locomotives, I guess you gotta think big.

There is a lot more to see and do there, but grandma and mom wanted to get going, so we had to leave.

If you want to go, check out the website: www.cassrailroad.com.