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The West Sub was the magnificent line that ran out of Cumberland east along the
Potomac River to Hagerstown MD and points east such as York PA, Gettysburg PA, Hanover PA, and Port Covington in
Baltimore MD. If you have ever ridden or walked on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) that runs from Cumberland
to Washington DC, you probably noticed the abandoned Western Maryland right-of-way running alongside the canal. Also, there are frequent high
tressles crossing the canal with trees growing up between the ties -- those are also WM. The canal is very scenic, but
the abandoned line is even more so, because it runs much higher away from the river than the canal, plus there is
all the neat engineering feats to walk past like huge cliff swatches, embankments, concrete overpasses and tressles.
Although I have not covered much ground along this route and none past Paw Paw WV, what I have seen so far has been
magnificent. This shot is of one of the bridges over the Potomac. Since this stretch of line was abandoned in the
early 1980s, the trees have shot up around the bridge and one has even managed to poke up between a couple bridge
ties. These tressles are okay to walk on as long as you are not afraid of heights and you have the stomach to
look dwon between the gaps in the ties to see the river far below your feet.
This is a shot from high above the Potomac Sub that was taken from the hill atop
the Paw Paw Tunnel through which the C&O Canal runs. The river makes a big loop here, so as a result the WM had to
bridge over this peninsula twice. The WM's 5th Crossing is exactly what can be seen as that speck in the middle of the shot. I just had to take
a picture here because the light of that day had postcardlike qualities about the day.
Some WM trackage is still in use in PA, MD, and WV. Seen in this shot at Hagerstown MD are a Conrail General Electric and a CSX General Motors locomotive sitting in the yard on a neat old art deco WM bridge. The path of progress with railroad mergers could not be stopped, as CSX absorbed WM in the 1970s, and later on Conrail, comprised of 100s of roads itself was divvied up between CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999. Currently, besides a few small excscursion lines, CSX owns all of the WM trackage that is still in use today. But in this region, you will be sure to see frieght cars and
motive power from all over the country. CSX's competitor Norfolk Southern also runs quite a few trains on CSX's rails.
This aerial shot from over Hagerstown yard shows the magnificent and once longest standing roundhouse in the US. A "Save the Roundhouse" Fund was launched in 1998 to try to save the house from demolition by buying the property from CSX, but the cries for help were unsucessful as it was finally sold to another buyer and subsequently destroyed in early 1999.
