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By Glenn Glasstetter
The area was originally known as Whitcomb Gulf. It was named after H. D. Whitcomb, one of the early civil engineers employed by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company, as it expanded west through West Virginia in the late 1860's and early 1870's. As the railroad pushed through the New River Gorge, the construction crews built the roadbed by creating a ledge in the mountain side above the river. This area has been plagued by rockslides for millions of years as the river carved its path down through the earth. At one point, the mountainside had long since slid away to create a vertical wall 130 feet high and 360 feet long? To cross this gulf, Whitcomb had his crews build a wooden trestle. One hundred and fifty feet past the trestle, a tunnel had to be bored through the mountain.
This trestle required continual maintenance so a section house was built on the only piece of flat land in the area, between the trestle and the tunnel on two sides and hard by the track, with the mountainside behind it. Although there were no permanent men assigned to it, the section house was occupied quite often for long periods by crews working on the trestle and maintaining the track. As this area was so remote, the men were dropped off and picked up by train.
As steam engine weight and coal tonnage increased, the C&O needed to improve it's roadbed, track and bridges to meet the demand. In 1899 under George W. Stevens, general manager of the C&O 1889-1899 and later president 1899-1920, the C&O replaced the wooden trestle with a bridge designed to be sufficiently strong and durable enough to carry trains over Whitcomb Gulf for many years to come. Stevens had contracted a civil engineer that was one of the premier bridge designers of that time. B. C. Whiton was retained to design four replacement bridges that needed to be upgraded on the C&O The bridge over Whitcomb Gulf was by far the largest and most challenging. Whiton designed a three span, iron deck truss bridge, supported by two 65' stone masonry piers and stone abutments on either end. Since this was such an impressive engineering marvel for its time,. the location known as Whitcomb Gulf has ever since been known as Whiton Bridge.
Despite the Depression, the era from 1929 to 1938 was one of growth and profits, due largely to the coal traffic generated along the C&O. Remembering the difficulty this section of right of way posed to the first builders of the C&O, it is not surprising that this portion of the mainline did not get double tracked until 1935. With improved materials and bridge building techniques, a steel trestle was constructed along side Whiton Bridge. This trestle consisted of three steel towers supporting a series of deck plate girder bridges. The three towers nestle perfectly between the stone piers of the original bridge and the two complement each other quite nicely. The original bridge designed by Whiton was so well constructed, that even now in 1952 it can handle the weight of modern steam engines and heavier trains with just a slight speed restriction?
The original section house burned down many years ago when a careless section hand fell asleep smoking in bed. The section house was rebuilt for the crews assigned to maintain the track and bridges on this remote section of the C&O mainline. The section crew is not required to spend as much time there as in the early days, but if you pass through the area on one of the C&O's
passenger trains, you just might see the track gang out there. The only other structures out there are a speeder/tool shed and an outhouse.
The proceeding story is part true and part fiction. H. D. Whitcomb and G. W. Stevens were indeed employees of the C&O as described. Whitcomb was immortalized by having the junction of the Greenbrier Sub-Division branch line and a boulder named after him. The boulder that had come down the mountain, deep in the New River Gorge, was so huge that it towered over the track, as the lower portion was undercut to allow trains to pass. Although the upper part of the boulder has been cut off so that it does not overhang the track, it still dwarfs today's trains.
B. C. Whiton is Brian Whiton, a friend of mine, who in fact designed both of these bridges on the fictitious Arlington Division of my C&O Railroad.
Long before my version of the C&O was started, or even designed, Al Kalbfleisch had written an article published in the November 1973 issue of Model Railroader showing how he made the John Allen Memorial Bridge for the Hartford Division of his D&RGW RR. When I saw the pictures, I knew I wanted one on my railroad, so when I designed it, I left a 4' gap where I wanted to place the bridge (I finally was able to see this bridge and Al's fine layout at an NMRA NER convention in 1995). My railroad was going to be single tracked, with passing sidings in each town. However, using Al's technique of combining two Vollmer through truss bridges to make a deck truss bridge, meant that this remote section of the mainline would have to be double tracked, as a single track would have been totally out of place on such a wide bridge. So be it!
After completing the deck, which consisted of the deck truss and deck plate approach spans on either end, and starting the two scratch build towers, I realized it would be out of place, as the C&O did not have any bridges of this type in West Virginia. As I discussed my dilemma with Brian during one of his visits to my house, he quickly came up with a sketch showing several spans of two parallel bridges as described in the previous story. I immediately realized I could easily fabricate both bridges with less effort than it would take to complete the double track bridge.
The deck truss bridge was fabricated using several of my favorite bridge bashing kits, the Atlas 65' Deck Truss Bridge, and casting and carving the stone abutments and piers from plaster. The deck plate bridge was built using Micro Engineering's viaduct towers and Atlas 65'throgh plate bridge girders between the towers. See, I told you it was easy. I got out of scratch building all of those crossweb girders and gusset plates and was able to create a more realistic scene for my layout.
I have not tried to accurately model the C&O by duplicating the actual right-of-way, cities and towns along the C&O, but I do model prototype structures or in this case build freelance structures that would be a plausible representation of what might have been found on the C&O in West Virginia. The point of this story is something that I first learned about freelancing from Brian, and has seen countless times on the best model railroads. That is, a scene should tell a story and model railroad should convey a sense of history. I have tried to convey both ideas in this scene and others on my layout. The story is the how the original mainline bridge was constructed using materials and techniques from the era in which it was constructed and when the mainline was double tracked many years later, it was built with more modern materials and techniques. These two bridges tell a story and convey a sense of history much better than one double track bridge in the same area would have accomplished.