Elkins (Western Maryland): Yard, History, Operations

Published: September 26, 2026

Elkins was the Western Maryland’s southern division point, and the town exists because the railroad put a yard there. Every branch in the Elkins Division came home to that yard: north over Black Fork Grade toward Cumberland, east on the Belington line to the Baltimore & Ohio, south on the Durbin Branch to the Chesapeake & Ohio, and west on the Greenbrier, Cheat & Elk toward Webster Springs. The roundhouse, the wash rack, and the depot were the parts a crew saw every day.

A pair of Western Maryland RS3s at the wash rack in Elkins West Virginia on August 27 1958

RS3s at the wash rack in the Elkins yard, August 27, 1958. David R. Sweetland photo. Author’s collection. Four-axle Alcos were the yard’s ordinary diesel. The curves on every line out of town were the reason.

On this page: At a glance · A yard that became a town · What the yard did · Engines for short, crooked railroads · The depot still boards passengers

At a glance

Item	Detail
Place	Elkins, West Virginia. Leadsville until the West Virginia Central arrived in 1889
Role	Headquarters of the Western Maryland’s Elkins Division. Yard, roundhouse, depot, wash rack
North	Thomas Subdivision to Parsons, Hendricks, Thomas, and Cumberland. Black Fork Grade is the hill
East	Belington Subdivision, 16 miles, opened 1891 and standard-gauged in 1892. Baltimore & Ohio at Belington
South	Durbin Branch, 46.9 miles, to the Chesapeake & Ohio. Dailey and Huttonsville branch, 1899
West	Greenbrier, Cheat & Elk, the Elk River line toward Webster Springs
Traffic	Coal gathered for Cumberland and Baltimore. Lumber, tanbark, mine supplies, and local merchandise
Power	Consolidations, then RS3s, Geeps, and F-units. Four axles. Helpers for Black Fork were based here by the early 1970s

A yard that became a town

Before the railroad, the place was Leadsville, a farming settlement that shipped by boat on the Tygart Valley River. Henry G. Davis’s West Virginia Central reached it in 1889 and the town that grew up on the yard took the name of Stephen B. Elkins. The main line from Cumberland had already done the hard work: Blackwater Canyon, the Parsons hill, and the climb to Haddix. Elkins was where that railroad stopped being a construction camp and became a division point.

The branches followed the yard, not the other way around. The Belington line, 16 miles, opened in 1891. It started as a three-foot railroad and was standard-gauged in 1892, and at Belington it met the Baltimore & Ohio, which is still the way a train from Elkins reaches the outside world. A short coal branch, the Belington & Beaver Creek, pushed on to Weaver in 1899. The same year the Huttonsville Branch left town for Dailey. The Coal & Iron Railway, chartered in December 1899, built the Durbin Branch. The Greenbrier, Cheat & Elk, bought in 1927, brought the Elk River coal and what was left of the logging railroad in from the west. Gould’s Western Maryland took the whole plant over with the West Virginia Central in 1905.

What the yard did on a weekday

Elkins classified coal. Mine runs came in off the Elk River, the Dailey branch, and the Durbin side, and the yard made them into trains for Cumberland. Those northbounds were the ones that would pick up helpers and fight Black Fork. Southbounds and westbounds were shorter: empties for a tipple, a merchandise car for a store, lumber loads coming back. The Belington job was the interchange. Cars for the B&O went east 16 miles; cars the B&O had brought for the WM came back the same way. When the Thomas Subdivision was later abandoned, that 16 miles became the only way in.

The depot handled what passenger service the division still had. The train people remember is the Durbin mixed, which by the 1950s ran three days a week and made its last trip on April 10, 1959. Cumberland–Elkins passenger service had already ended in 1957–58. After the coach came off, the depot was a freight office until the excursion era put passengers in it again. The wash rack in the 1958 photograph was not a showpiece. Branch engines came in coated with coal and lumber dust, and the rack was where an RS3 was hosed off before it went back out.

There was also a roundhouse, and it lasted long enough to be useful to somebody else. In May 1981, after the WM had become a Chessie stepchild, Baltimore & Ohio GP30s were stored in that house. The building was the Elkins Division’s, even when the engines in it wore another railroad’s initials.

Engines for short, crooked railroads

The steam assignment out of Elkins was a Consolidation assignment. H-7s, H-8s, and H-9s covered the branches and the canyon. The H-8s, with 52-inch drivers, were built for railroad exactly like the Durbin Branch and the Elk River line. Decapods and 2-8-8-2s were the Blue Ridge helpers, based farther north. A Challenger was the wrong engine for a 2 percent branch with a mill spur, and Elkins rarely saw one. The classes are the steam roster.

Diesels followed the same rule. RS3s were everywhere in the yard by the late 1950s, including the four hammerheads, 192–194 and 197, whose high short hoods carried a steam generator for the Durbin mixed. F-units and Geeps shared the mine runs. Six-axle power was a visitor, not a resident. Every line out of Elkins has curves that punished a long wheelbase, which is why photographs of the yard, from the WM years through the early CSX years, are photographs of four-axle engines. By 1972 the Black Fork helpers were being added in this yard and cut off at Thomas, so the canyon’s extra units lived here even though the hill they fought was thirty miles north. The serials are the diesel roster.

The depot still boards passengers

The Thomas Subdivision north of Elkins did not survive the flood of November 1985. CSX declined the repairs, and the line to Cumberland came up. What the state kept, and what the West Virginia Central operates, is the rest of the old division: Belington, the yard and depot in Elkins, the remaining Durbin Subdivision out toward Cheat Junction, the Elk River line, and the Dailey branch. The West Virginia Central moved its headquarters into the Western Maryland depot. The Durbin & Greenbrier Valley boards the New Tygart Flyer and the dinner trains there.

The wash rack and the roundhouse are gone as a Class I facility. The job they did is still visible in the track layout: a yard in a valley, with a railroad leaving in four directions, only one of which was ever easy.

Sources

Cook, Roger, and Karl Zimmermann. The Western Maryland Railway: Fireballs and Black Diamonds. Elkins Division assignments, and the Consolidation as the branch engine
McNeel, William. The Durbin Route. The Coal & Iron and the 46.9 miles from the Elkins station
Western Maryland Railway. Belington branch, 1891, standard-gauged 1892. Huttonsville Branch, 1899. Last passenger train, the Durbin mixed, April 10, 1959
Trains, November 1972. Diesel helpers for Black Fork added at Elkins and cut off at Thomas
American-Rails.com, West Virginia Central. The depot, the yard, and what the state kept after 1985

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