CSXT's historic former B&O interlocking tower at West Cumbo, West Virginia, has closed. Its final day of service was November 21. West Cumbo is the second of four towers to be closed as part of an ongoing signaling improvement project in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. A state-of-the-art electro-code signaling system is being installed along a 60-mile portion of CSXT's busy Cumberland Subdivision from Harpers Ferry to Orleans Road, making the intervening towers obsolete. The other towers include Miller, which closed on September 24, and Martinsburg and Hancock, which are slated to close next year (subject to funding).
West Cumbo, near the town of Hedgesville, Berkeley County, controlled the interlocking at milepost 105 at the east end of the low-grade freight line and its junction with the two other main tracks, east of North Mountain. The interlocking has now been replaced with higher-speed switches that are controlled by the train dispatcher in Jacksonville, Florida.
The tower was built in 1913. It replaced an earlier structure, built in 1904, which was destroyed by fire in 1912. The 1904 tower, named Hedgesville, was a 12' x 24' two-story frame structure housing a 40-lever Saxby & Farmer machine with 27 levers in service. It stood on the south side of the tracks, the foundation for which is still visible. It is presumed that the tower only controlled main track crossovers and the east end of the then-Cherry Run & Potomac Valley Railroad (now the low-grade freight line) from Miller.
An item from the Martinsburg (West Virginia) Herald, February 17, 1912, reads as follows:
"The Hedgesville interlocking switch tower caught fire from an overheated stove about one o'clock Saturday night and burned down, destroying the telegraph wires and causing delays of trains and general confusion on the B. & O. between Martinsburg and Cumberland."
The B&O was expanding in the area at the time with a new yard to be known as Cumbo, for the interchange of coal with the Cumberland Valley Railroad. With the need of a new interlocking tower to replace the one destroyed, plans were drawn in October 1912 for a larger 15' x 24' two-story frame structure on the north side of the tracks, across from the former site. It was completed the following year, housing a 64-lever electric General Railway Signal machine, and given the name of West Cumbo.
A hallmark feature of the tower was its interior spiral metal staircase. Interestingly, the tower lacked the shingled overhang beneath the second-story windows which was so common among B&O's frame towers of the period.
Its model board was installed in 1945. In 1956, the signal bridge just west of the tower was removed, new switch machines were installed, and all remaining semaphore signals were replaced with those of color-position lights. In the early 1990's, the interlocking was simplified with the removal of a crossover. Cumbo Yard, having been reduced by then to a place of storage for old railroad cars, was retired in 1998.
West Cumbo continued its anomalous position as a tower within a cluster of towers, which averaged a mere six miles apart, much as in their heyday when there were towers to serve interlockings similarly spaced throughout the system. The Cumberland Sub cluster was one of the last such clusters of towers remaining in the country.
[Special thanks to CSXT locomotive engineer Michael P. Welsh for his input with historical research for this article.]
- B&O No. 8, the "Shenandoah," eastbound by West Cumbo Tower on September 27, 1964.
- [Photo by Jim Bradley]
TOWERS IN 1928...
There were 15 towers in service along the B&O line in West Virginia - from Harpers Ferry to Patterson Creek - in 1928. Their average spacing was six miles apart. The four towers remaining into the beginning of 2000 - from Martinsburg to Hancock - were similarly spaced an average of six miles apart...
- Harpers Ferry (HF) - block operator handling switches
- Engle (N) - block operator handling switches
- Hobbs (RN) - block operator handling switches
- Martinsburg (NA) - block operator handling switches
- East Cumbo (BO) - block operator/clerk
- West Cumbo (W) - block operator handling switches
- Millers (R) - block operator handling switches
- Sleepy Creek (SC) - block operator handling switches
- Hancock (HO) - block operator/clerk handling switches
- Sir Johns Run (CK) - block operator handling switches
- Great Cacapon (GC) - block operator handling switches
- Orleans Road (AD) - block operator handling switches
- Okonoko (NO) - block operator handling switches
- Green Spring (GI) - block operator handling switches
- Patterson Creek (FN) - block operator handling switches
- Engle (N) - block operator handling switches