In 2016, I spent a day tracing the remnants of the former Wheeling Terminal Railway across the hills surrounding downtown Wheeling, West Virginia.
In 2016, I spent a day tracing the remnants of the former Wheeling Terminal Railway across the hills surrounding downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. The Ohio River bridge had been removed decades earlier, yet the railroad’s alignment remained clearly defined in the landscape.
The grade beneath Mount Wood led to the twin tunnel portals, measuring 537 feet and 1,203 feet in length, set high above the Ohio River. Their concrete facings were weathered but largely intact, framing dark interiors lined with brick and stone. One bore had collapsed farther inside, restricting passage, but the other remained accessible and opened toward an overlook where the river bridge once stood. The absence of the span was noticeable, though the approach embankments still suggested its former position.
Farther south, the alignment continued to the 2,406-foot Chapline Hill Tunnel, completed in 1895 to reach the Riverside Iron Works. One portal was partially obscured by later industrial construction, while the opposite end rested quietly beneath a modern freeway interchange.
Between these points, the line crossed Wheeling Creek on a 320-foot deck truss bridge. Its riveted steel and lattice bracing remained in place.
By 2016, vegetation had overtaken much of the right-of-way of the Wheeling Terminal Railway, but the tunnels and bridgework continued to define the deliberate path cut through ridge and valley more than a century earlier.
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