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Elkins Rotary Club hears oral history of railroads

The Inter-Mountain photo by Tim MacVean West Virginia Railroad Museum president Jim Schoonover gives an oral railroad history to members of the Elkins Rotary club Monday afternoon.

ELKINS — Elkins Rotarians received an oral history of railroads in the area during their weekly meeting Monday at the Elkins-Randolph County YMCA.

Jim Schoonover, president of the West Virginia Railroad Museum, located in the former Darden Mill along Railroad Avenue in Elkins, spoke to the group, sharing stories regarding railroads in and around Elkins.

“The first railroad chartered in the United States was the New Jersey Railroad in 1850. It is a common misconception that it was the (Baltimore and Ohio),” he said.

However, he added the B&O Railroad was the first to have passenger revenues, and was the first to operate between the eastern seaboard and Ohio River.

“It was the first to operate a locomotive built in the United States. The railroad in New Jersey used horses for a while then locomotives that came from Great Britain,” he said.

Schoonover added the first railroad telegraph line also was utilized by the B&O Railroad.

“What year do you think the railroad was open between Baltimore and Wheeling?” Schoonover asked. “It happened Jan. 1, 1853. The first telegraph line for railroads, even though the federal government paid considerably for it, the first one was on the Baltimore and Ohio, and on May 24, 1844, the telegraph line was open between Camden Station in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.”

Schoonover said in 1861, Gen. Stonewall Jackson traveled to Harpers Ferry then on to Martinsville, where he stole 14 locomotives from the B&O Railroad.

“They took them over land by hauling them with horses, oxen and other things,” he said.

He added around that time was the first instance of the railroad being utilized during a time of war.

“The railroad changed hands and a lot of it had to do with the ineptitude of the Union generals …,” Schoonover said. “It was really the first time the railroad had been used during a war.”

He went on to say the railroad was important because many people ended up here, via the railroad, working in coal mines.

“If you were born in central West Virginia and you have an Italian name, or an Irish name or a Polish name, quite likely your ancestors were brought here by the railroad, so these folks could then work in the coal mines here in West Virginia,” Schoonover said. “They were given a free ticket. It wasn’t pleasant work they did but a lot of us who live here — you know people and there’s probably several of us here in the room — you can trace people back from where they came into New York and arrived by train.

“The Swiss in Helvetia came by railroad here. The railroads, especially the B&O, being the first one to the Ohio River, gave a system of transportation to a place that didn’t have one,” he continued.

Schoonover explained that in 1929, railroad employees’ wages averaged roughly 67 cents per hour compared to 1975, where they earned approximately $7.93 per hour.

“That wasn’t bad pay for the time. When we consider in 1975 they still had the shops here in Elkins. There were 700 people working in the railroad shops here in Elkins in 1975. These people, aside from the operations folks, the people that fixed the tracks, they had the shops which made cars and repaired cars here,” he said. “These were great jobs. These jobs pretty well all were gone by 1987, so when we look at things that happened from the mid-’70s to the mid-’80s here locally, we saw 700 really good-paying jobs evaporate. … A lot of people left and took jobs doing other things, but it was a big blow to this community when we saw all those jobs leave.”

He closed by saying the history of the railroad affects everyone in the region.

“When we talk about the history of all this, the history of the railroad is the history of all of us here,” Schoonover said.

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