Penn Central ex-NYC trackage: WBV Branch

The WBV Branch, or River Line, connected Clearfield with the former PRR Buffalo Line at Keating and was the area's primary conduit for coal heading to Eastern markets. Its 53 miles pretty much paralleled the West Branch of the Susquehanna River and traversed some of Pennsylvania's most beautiful and rugged wilderness. Typically, four or five coal trains were dispatched downriver each day.
Above, an eastbound dives into the Shawsville tunnel, one of four tunnels on the WBV, June 1973. At right, it is February 1972 and we're above the tunnel portal, looking west toward the Penelec generating station and the river crossing.
Left, coal heads east on a June evening in 1973, as seen from the Rolling Stone bridge near Keewaydin. Above, a westbound that includes a caboose and five covered hoppers likely containing ammonium nitrate, commonly used in explosives in strip mines, crosses Mosquito Creek, a West Branch tributary, at Karthaus, September 1969.
Penn Central Clearfield-area map Return to Penn Central Hauls the Coal