State Parks and National Parks

Nestled in the mountains of West Virginia, Cass Scenic Railroad State Park offers an excursion back in time to an era when steam-driven locomotives were part of everyday life.

A trip to Cass offers unparalleled views of a vast wilderness area and a close-up encounter with the sights and sounds of original steam-driven locomotives.

With a country store, museum and train station, the town of Cass remains relatively unchanged from a century ago.

The Cass Scenic Railroad is the same line built in 1902 and used to haul timber to the mill in Cass. The locomotives are original, and the passenger cars are made from refurbished logging flat cars.

Once you board the train, the great pistons start pulsing, the gears begin turning, the wheels find traction and the 90-ton locomotive begins to move. You pass the Cass Shop, where the locomotives are serviced and repaired, and a graveyard of antiquated, but fascinating equipment on sidetracks.

Two switchbacks allow the train to gain quick altitude, about 11 feet for each 100 feet of track. Two feet per 100 is considered steep!

Whittaker Station shows a 1940s logging camp, complete with living quarters, tools and a Ledgerwood tower skidder, one of only two left in the world. These huge rail car-mounted machines carried logs out of the woods on aerial cables high in the air and for distances up to 3,000 feet.

The full five-hour trip continues to Bald Knob, the second-highest point in West Virginia with an altitude of 4,842 feet and a view into two states. If you take the trip on Friday, you travel an alternative trip to the abandoned town of Spruce, high on Cheat Mountain, along the banks of the Shaver's Fork of the Cheat River. You will also visit the Big Cut, the highest point on a mainline in the East.

Guests visiting Cass may choose among several completely furnished, original two-story houses from the turn-of-the-century logging town.

Electric heaters provide heat, and one cottage is wheelchair-accessible.

Open year-round, the cottages are rented for a two-night minimum, up to a maximum of two weeks.

The park also permits canoeing and kayaking during spring and autumn high-water periods.