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Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, The Volume 2 by John Corns Hard Cover 2002 128 Pgs
The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Volume 2 by John Corns
Hard Cover
Copyright 2002
128 Pages
The W&LE began operations in 1877 on 12.5 miles of narrow-gauge track linking the bustling town of Norwalk, Ohio, and the sleepy village of Huron on the Lake Erie shore. In addition to a pair of conventional 4-4-0s purchased that year, the road acquired two, Mason 0-4-4 Forney-type locomotives from the New York & Manhattan Beach Railroad in 1879. Anticipated freight business was almost non-existent, and the line barely survived by operating weekend passenger excursions for those who wanted the thrill of riding on the newfangled rail road. Operations ceased in 1879, and the road lay dormant. New financial backing was secured from the Jay Gould interests, and the W&LE was rebuilt as a standard-gauge road in 1881. It's narrow-gauge 4-4-0s numbered 1 and 2 were sold to the Clarksburg, Weston & Midland, and the St.Clairsville & Northern, respectively. W&LE's two Forneys were rebuilt as standard gauge 2-4-4s numbered 6 and 7 (right) which continued in service as construction advanced toward the line's namesake city of Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1881 W&LE bought three, freight-hauling 0-6-6 Bogies numbered 3-5 from the Mason Machine Works in Taunton, Massachusetts, but quickly learned that it had little need for such powerful engines. Consequently, No.4 was leased to the Detroit, Lansing & Northern for a year, and, when it was returned in 1883, the engineer who regularly had been assigned to it had tears in his eyes as he said goodbye to the finest locomotive that he had ever run. When replaced on main line freights by W&LE's first 4-6-0s in 1886, 0-6-6 No.3 (below) became the yard switcher in Norwalk, while sister No.4 assumed similar duties at Ironville. Mason No.5 was destroyed in a roundhouse fire at Creston the night of December 7, 1882, but its bell was salvaged from the burned carcass and applied to Rome 4-4-0 No.30. The boiler from No.5 was installed inside Norwalk Shop the following year where it continued to supply steam for 25 more years, until it was consumed by fire for a second time when that shop burned in August 1908. Bottom right-Engineers William Ruhl and Wallace Drury pose for this self-portrait on the pilot beam of a Mason 0-6-6 in Norwalk Yard. Ruhl was the nephew of W&LE's Master Mechanic O.P. Dunbar, and Drury was an amateur photographer and self-ordained preacher who loved to deliver fire-and-brimstone sermons on his days off. He made many of the early-day W&LE photos that appear in this book and in Volume I, but it is unknown exactly which ones are his.
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