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Chesapeake & Ohio Paint Creek Branch and Handley Yard by McChord Series #7 SC
Chesapeake & Ohio Paint Creek Branch and Handley Yard by Dr Wendell McChord
C&O Railway series #7
Soft Cover
64 pages
Copyright 2014
CONTENTS
Chapter Onethe Setting 4
Chapter TwoPaint Creek's First Railway and the Arrival of the C&O10
Chapter ThreeBuilding Handley Yard 14
Chapter FourPaint Creek's Narrow Gauge and Establishing Pratt 28
Chapter FiveBuilding the Paint Creek Branch 30
Chapter SixCompany Towns and PAssenger Stops on Paint Creek Branch 42
Chapter SevenBranch Line Passenger Service 58
Chapter EightDemise of the Branch Line and Handley Yard62
INTRODUCTION
Paint Creek Branch is a little known part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O). Now that it has been abandoned for nearly 30 years, it is almost a forgotten part of the former C&O. Handley Yard was a little better known and has been gone about the same amount of time. This book will attempt to tell how and why they were considered important to the C&O at the time they were built.
The north-south part of valley through which the C&O ran for 22 miles was completely isolated to the east and west. The lower and middle parts of the valley were late in getting an improved road; even into the motor car age. Yet the valley of the creek was well-known to the Native Americans and it had one of their important regional roads that named the creek. Today, the West Virginia Turnpike (I-64 and I-77) traverses much of the length of the creek.
The vibrant culture that once existed along the creek and its rail line is completely gone. There is little trace of most of the once-thriving company towns; there was a company town every mile and a half or two along the branch line. This route was exposed to the motoring public when the West Virginia Turnpike was opened in 1954 through the same valley as the creek, the C&O, and the county road. The changes that occurred over the years were right along the Turnpike for hundreds of thousands of motorists to see. As the years went by, pieces of the culture disappeared from view of the modern highway. It went unnoticed and, in retrospect, it happened ever so quickly. I personally saw it happening as I traveled the new highway several times during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Several photographs are included here to show the way the valley looked in the prime of its golden years. Author and local Fayette County historian Dale Payne of Fayetteville has written a Pictorial History of Paint Creek 1750s-1950s. It is recommended reading for the valley's personal history, which this history is not. Dale grew up in Eskdale over in Cabin Creek so he and lived in that lost culture. He has been very generous in sharing many of his photographs pertaining to the C&O along Paint Creek for us to enjoy and for me to better to tell its story.
Photographs most vividly tell the real story by showing what words cannot adequately describe. Old photographs are priceless in many ways and they cannot be replaced! The moment the capture on film is gone forever. With some imagination, however, one can almost enter that vanished moment again. Photographs give us that glimpse of the past, a snapshot of history. We all wish we had taken more photographs back in our lives of things that were common place then but are now gone. We are fortunate to have so many vintage photographs of the C&O, and even the Paint Creek Branch, to help tell its story. These pictures were moments captured by several photographers over many decades. They can put you in the picture along a stretch of railway the C&O called the Paint Creek Branch and over a century of change along the mainline around its junction. In the pages that follow I will try, as an outsider to that region, to tell its railroad story.
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