Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway

The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway (W&LE) is a railroad operating primarily within Ohio and includes several abandoned or disused branches.

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The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway (W&LE) is a railroad operating primarily within Ohio and includes several abandoned or disused branches. Over the course of its history, the W&LE was affiliated with the Nickel Plate Road, the Norfolk & Western Railway, and Norfolk Southern. In 1989, the original W&LE was dissolved as a corporate entity. It was reestablished in 1990 by a group of investors who acquired most of the former W&LE routes from Norfolk Southern.

History

Predecessors

Carrollton & Lodi Railroad

The earliest predecessor of the W&LE was the Carrollton & Lodi Railroad, organized in 1837 to connect Carrollton and Lodi with the Sandy Beaver Canal. ¹ It was reorganized as the Carroll County Railroad (CC) in 1846 and began service in May 1853 between Carrollton and the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad’s Tuscarawas Branch at Oneida. ^{1 5} In 1859, the CC was sold to two individuals, who later transferred it to investors that reorganized it as the Carrollton & Oneida Railroad in February 1866.

In May 1872, E.R. Eckley, a lawyer, former congressman, and Civil War general, organized the Ohio & Toledo Railroad to build a line between Toledo and the Ohio River via Massillon. ⁵ Eckley acquired the Carrollton & Oneida in July 1873 for $1 and extended the line to Minerva by October 1874. The Ohio & Toledo entered bankruptcy in 1878 and was acquired by the Youngstown & Connotton Valley Railroad (Y&CV), organized in August 1877 to build between Bowerston and Youngstown. By May 1880, the line between Minerva and Canton was completed.

The Y&CV reorganized as the Connotton Valley Railway (CV) in June 1880. ⁵ Extensions followed: to Sherrodsville by January 1882; to Bedford by July 1881; to Navarre by July 1882; to Cleveland by November; to Beach City by December; to Coshocton by June 1883; and to Zanesville by June 1889. In May 1885, the CV became the Cleveland, Canton & Southern Railroad (CC&S).

The CC&S entered foreclosure in 1899 and was sold to the W&LE, becoming its Cleveland Division.

Lake Erie, Alliance & Wheeling Railroad

The Lake Erie, Alliance & Wheeling Railroad was incorporated on February 16, 1874, by Hugh Bleakley of Alliance. ⁴ Bleakley envisioned a line from Bridgeport, across from Wheeling, to the Painesville & Youngstown Railroad near Southington via Alliance, Bowerston, and Cadiz. Construction began on July 31, 1875. By 1876, the line reached Palmyra and Braceville, connecting with the Erie Railroad by May 1877.

The railroad was sold to the Cleveland Rolling Mill Company and reorganized in May 1878 as the Alliance & Lake Erie Railroad with plans to extend north to Fairport Harbor. ⁴ By 1879, it had only reached Phalanx on the Erie Railroad’s Cleveland Branch. In March 1881, it was reorganized as the Cleveland, Youngstown & Pittsburgh Railway (CY&P) with the goal of linking the Painesville & Youngstown near Southington with the Conotton Valley Railway near Streetsboro. The CY&P extended south to Bergholz but entered receivership in March 1884 and reorganized as the Lake Erie, Alliance & Southern Railroad (LEA&S).

It operated as the Alliance & Northern Railroad until 1901, when it was renamed the Lake Erie, Alliance & Wheeling Railroad. ⁴ The line was extended to Dillonvale, 17 miles short of Wheeling. The LEA&W eventually came under the control of the New York Central Railroad and functioned primarily as a coal-hauling branch between Phalanx and Dillonvale.

The New York Central abandoned the segment between Phalanx and Braceville in 1962. Its successor, Penn Central, removed the section between Braceville and Newton Falls in 1969. ⁴ Conrail, Penn Central’s successor, dismantled the Newton Falls to Alliance segment in 1976.

Adena, Cadiz & New Athens Railway

The Adena, Cadiz & New Athens Railway was organized in 1914 to connect Adena with Duncanwood (Duncan) to serve the Short Creek Coal Company. ¹⁷ The six-mile line opened in November 1917 and was shortly thereafter acquired by the W&LE.

Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad

The Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad was established on April 6, 1871, with the goal of connecting Martins Ferry (and indirectly Wheeling, West Virginia) with Orville, Norwalk, Huron, Sandusky, and Toledo. ¹ The railroad sought to access Ohio’s coal deposits. ⁶ Investors agreed to construct the line at $15,000 per mile if communities along the route subscribed $10,000 per mile. By the end of 1871, right-of-way within six miles of Wooster had been secured, and nearly $1 million in subscriptions had been obtained.

Construction began in early 1872, but a taxpayer’s lawsuit and a national financial panic halted work until 1877. ⁶ The 12½-mile segment between Huron and Norwalk, following the Huron River and an old canal alignment, opened on May 31, 1877. ¹ Allegations of fraud in 1879 again halted further construction. ⁶

In 1880, Jay Gould began purchasing W&LE securities. ¹ He intended to complete the railroad as a freight route linking the Wabash Railroad in Toledo with the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The line was completed between Norwalk and Massillon in January 1882, extended to Fremont in April, and by August reached Toledo to the west and Zoar Station to the east. ^{1 6} In September 1882, Gould secured trackage rights over the Marietta & Pittsburg Railroad (M&P) from Zoar Station to Dover.

Folk’s Station Tunnel, 450 feet in length, was completed in July 1889 after nearly a year of construction. ¹ Built by the Rexford Brothers, it passed beneath the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad’s Cadiz Branch and replaced an earlier unfinished tunnel. By 1889, the W&LE had reached Martins Ferry, across the Ohio River from Wheeling. ⁶ A branch to Steubenville was added in 1891. ⁸

The first coal mine along the W&LE opened in Adena in 1899. ^{9 18} Located 14 miles west of Martins Ferry, Adena became a center of one of Ohio’s major bituminous coal-producing districts, with 17 deep mines and five strip mines capable of producing 17,000 tons of coal daily.

The W&LE was leased by the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road) in 1949. In 1951, the Hanna Coal Company began strip mining near Cadiz and constructed the Georgetown Coal Preparation Plant. ¹⁴ One of the largest preparation plants in the world, it processed up to 1,275 tons of coal per hour. The W&LE built the 11½-mile Georgetown Branch to serve the plant. ¹⁶ The facility was also served by a 108-mile pipeline transporting finished coal to the Cleveland Illuminating Company power plant in Eastlake. Opened on September 12, 1956, it was the world’s first long-distance coal pipeline.

Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway

The Nickel Plate Road merged into the Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W) in 1964. In 1982, N&W merged with the Southern Railway to form Norfolk Southern Railway (NS). The original W&LE was dissolved in 1989, but was reestablished in 1990 as the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway by investors who formed the Wheeling Acquisition Corporation and acquired most of the former W&LE routes from NS. ⁷ The revived W&LE also incorporated portions of the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad and the Akron, Canton & Youngstown Railroad. It acquired 446 miles of track from NS and simultaneously leased an additional 121 miles. ¹⁹

In 1994, the W&LE purchased the Akron & Barberton Belt Railroad, along with certain Conrail lines in the Akron area, and renamed the operation the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway. ⁷

The Georgetown Coal Preparation Plant closed in 1995, and the Georgetown Branch was subsequently discontinued. ¹² In July 1999, the W&LE placed 18 miles of its Valley Subdivision out of service between milepost 188½ near Unionvale and milepost 205½ near Warrenton. This included the stations of East Cadiz (MP 185), Kenwood (MP 189), Adena (MP 192), Dillonvale (MP 199.9), and Warrenton (MP 204). ¹³

Over time, the W&LE transitioned from a coal-dependent railroad to a diversified regional carrier. It handled steel and raw materials for five mills; aggregates from three quarries; chemicals; industrial minerals, including frac sand; plastic products; grain and food products; lumber; paper; and petroleum products, including LPGs and NGLs derived from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. ¹⁹ The railroad upgraded its mainline to accommodate 286,000-pound gross weight railcars and a track speed of 40 miles per hour. Its system expanded to 576 miles of owned track and 840 miles of trackage rights.

On December 26, 2025, the Wheeling Corporation, parent of the W&LE, was acquired by FTAI Infrastructure in a $1.05 billion transaction. ^{19 20} FTAI Infrastructure owns the short-line and terminal switching operator Transtar. The W&LE connects with Transtar’s Union Railroad in the Pittsburgh area. Transtar also operates several former U.S. Steel properties, including the Union Railroad; the East Ohio Valley Railway; the Lake Terminal Railroad in Lorain, Ohio; the Delray Connecting Railroad in the Detroit area; the Gary Railway in Indiana; the Fairfield Southern in Alabama; and the Texas & Northern.

Incidents

On October 23, 1930, two men were killed and a third seriously injured when an 800-foot tunnel northwest of Adena partially collapsed onto a passing freight train caboose. ¹⁰ Approximately 300 feet of the tunnel fell in. ¹¹ The victims were recovered after six hours of excavation, witnessed by a crowd of approximately 3,000 people gathered at the site. ¹⁰

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Gallery

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Sources

1. Titchenal, Stephen. Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad History. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Print.
2. “Cleveland and Marietta Railway Company.” Ohio Railway Report 1860’s History. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.
3. “Carrollton and Oneida R.R. Co.” Annual Report of the Commissioner of Railroads and Telegraphs. Comp. George B. Wright. Vol. 1. Columbus: Nevins & Myers, 1870. 542. Print.
4. “Lake Erie, Alliance & Wheeling Railroad.” American Narrow Gauge Railroads. Hilton, George Woodman. Stanford Univ., 1990. 470. Print.
5. “History of the Byesville Scenic Railway.” Byesville Scenic Railway. 2010. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. Article.
6. Sanders, Craig. Introduction. Canton Area Railroads. Charleston: Arcadia, 2009. 7-10. Print.
7. “History.” Wheeling Lake Erie Railway. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.
8. “A Look Back At The Original W&LE Railway.” Railfan. Web. 03 Mar. 2016. Article.
9. “Adena Railroads.” Adena News. Web. 03 Mar. 2016. Article.
10. “RAILROAD TUNNEL COLLAPSES ON TRAIN IN OHIO.” Reno Evening Gazette 23 Oct. 1930: n. pag. Print.
11. “W. & L. RR seeks cause of cave-in.” Plain Dealer [Cleveland] 23 Oct. 1930: n. pag. Print.
12. “Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Company—Abandonment Exemption— in Harrison and Jefferson Counties, OH.” Federal Register 62.191 (1997): 51714-15. Print.
13. “Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway Company—Abandonment Exemption— in Harrison and Jefferson Counties, OH.” Federal Register 64.139 (1999): 39186-87. Print.
14. “PITTSBURGH NO. 8 FIELD.” Coal Camp USA. Web. 03 Mar. 2016. Article.
15. “It happened in Cleveland.” NAOSMM. Web. 03 Mar. 2016. Article.
16. “NKP Nickel Plate Road.” Appalachian Railroad Modeling. Web. 03 Mar. 2016. Article.
17. Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (1917). 402-404. Print.
18. “Adena Mine.” Adena News.
19. Stephens, Bill. “Infrastructure fund to acquire Ohio-based regional Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway.” TrainsPro, 6 Aug. 2025.
20. “STB approves Fortress Investment’s purchase of Wheeling & Lake Erie, Akron-area short line.” TrainsPro, 26 Nov. 2025.