McCoole, MD 2/20/2012 - Westbound Q-317 pulls 40 cars of mixed freight by 21st Bridge Lane enroute to Keyser, WV and ultimately Grafton, WV on the CSX Mounatin Subdivision between Cumberland and Grafton. The Mountain Subdivison was once the primary B&O route to the midwest via St. Louis, and it boasted passenger trains, a high-priority trailer train to St. Louis, and other sensitive freight. The line was truncated west of Clarksburg, WV in the 1980s, and relagated to coal traffic and one pair of manifests (Q-317 west, and Q-316 east). In the background to the right of the locomotive is the now-abandoned Western Maryland Thomas Subdivision mainline, which was left in place as far east as this point, where it interchanged with the former B&O mainline. The switch from the CSX main to the abandoned WM track had just been removed--one week before this image was taken--because local track crews needed the spare parts from the switch points and frogs. Before that, the interchange had sat dormant for over a decade.
