Last week a friend and I spent the week at the Cass Scenic Railroad in Cass, West Virginia. The first time we were there was in September, 1972! Since then Cass has always been my favorite train location.
Then and now you can ride a Shay powered train to Whittaker or all the way to the summit of Bald Knob. We rented one of the company houses for four nights and has a great time talking on the front porch in the evening.
Many things have remained the same but some important things have changed. I will explain.
Cass has been, and still is, closed on Mondays. In the past Tuesday through Sunday you could always ride either one of the Whittaker trains or the one Bald Knob train. Once in Cass we would decide which day to go to Bald Knob based on the changeable weather.
Today only the single Bald Knob train runs on Tuesdays and only the Whittaker train runs on Thursdays. Both run on the other days.
We arrived in Cass on Monday evening. When we went to the station Tuesday morning we discovered that only the Bald Knob train was running and it was sold out!
There are two reasons why it was sold out: 1. the train now only has a single locomotive and, because of this, is now only five cars long, 2. most tickets are sold online! Based on our history we felt that "online" and "Cass" don't go together! We were also upset then we were told that double headed steam is over at Cass which, for us, was one of Cass' main selling points!
We were able to get tickets for Wednesday's Bald Knob train although there were only 20 left. For Tuesday we went on the shop tour and later visited the Green Bank Observatory.
Wednesday we rode the Bald Know train with Shay #2 as power which I was happy about since I have an HO brass model of it running in my office at work.
Unfortunately pushing five cars was a bit too much for her. Her throttle was pretty much wide open for the entire trip up and, since we were in the car next to her, the volume of her exhaust was painfully loud. It was almost as loud as the whistle. Forget about trying to hear the commentary. I believe this may be very hard on the locomotive forcing higher maintenance.
On Thursday we rode the Durbin Rocket which was great because Cass Heisler #6 was the power. I hadn't seen #6 run for probably 20 years. Afterwards we were able to get back to Cass to ride the last Whittaker trip with #4 as power pushing four cars which was easily within her capability. I actually enjoyed that trip more then the Bald Knob one.
I understand and appreciate Cass's new train operator's, (the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley), efforts to improve the operation and keep it profitable. However I think they should go back to the previous Bald Knob train configuration. There were at least 10 people on Tuesday who were turned away to do it being full. Most of them could now come back the next day. With a longer, nine car, and double headed train that could accommodate 120 more people, (max 30 per car), and have happier customers. Hopefully they will change!
