Cass

For the past week or so I have been viewing my Cass Scenic Railroad tape, which I consider to be one of the most fantastic train-videos I own; right up there with my Corridor cab-rides and the mighty Curve.
Like the others, it’s not fantastic because of the video; it’s the content. As I’m sure I’ve said on this site hundreds of times: all railfans, by law, should be required to visit Cass — mainly to hear the steam-whistles echo through the hollers.
The “Out and Away” editor at the mighty Mezz suggested I write another treatise like “the mighty Curve.” Cass qualifies, but it’s too far away. Horseshoe Curve was too far also — but that’s only half a day. Cass is a whole day, or two.
I’ll never forget the first time I visited Cass, alone, about 10 years ago.
I had parked the Faithful Hunda, and was striding across the vast parking-lot toward the depot, when one of the engines let out two short whistle-toots up by the water-tower to start its train.
It echoed on-and-on forever, bringing tears to my eyes. Every railfan should hear that.
But Cass could even be appealing to non-railfans. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and like going back 90 years.
The entire town has been restored to what it once was, except for the gigantic lumber-mill, which burned down in 1982.
The huge company-store still stands, and now houses a restaurant and gift-shop. And the restaurant isn’t McDonalds; your flapjacks get serenaded by acoustic mountain-music.
Cass Scenic Railroad isn’t a normal railroad. It’s steep, twisting, and uses switchbacks to gain altitude. The steepest mainline railroad I’ve ever seen is the 3% ATSF line over Cajon. Tehachapi is 2.5%; the mighty Curve is only 1.75%.
Cass has grades as steep as 11 and 13%; that’s 13 feet of climb per 100 feet.
Cass is a logging-railroad. It wasn’t meant to move freight over long distances. It was meant to bring logs out of the hills.
The steam-engines on Cass aren’t the side-rod engines you saw on mainline railroads. No way could a side-rod engine climb a 13% grade, or negotiate the rudimentary track logging railroads used.
A number of designs were made to meet the need, but most popular was the “Shay,” invented by Ephraim Shay, built by Lima Locomotive.
All designs were based on the idea of pistons working a driveshaft that turned wheels with helical gears. The driveshaft also had splinning and universals so the trucks could turn.
The Shay slung the cylinders and driveshaft on one side. Other designs, the Heisler and the Climax, have pistons working a central driveshaft. Cass has six Shays, one Heisler, and one non-working Climax in storage.
A side-rod engine would slip on a steep grade; but not a Shay. The multiple power-strokes are evenly distributed, many to a wheel-revolution. A rod engine only has four (or six, if it’s a triple) — and behind a rod engine you can feel the piston-thrusts work the train side-to-side.
You’ll also never see switchbacks in mainline railroading; too hard and expensive to operate and time-consuming.
Switchbacks are used to gain altitude without looping the railroad all over the mountain — although often that’s the best way to surmount a mountain. Switchbacks are too time-consuming. Switchbacks also reduced the amount of grading needed, But they were a bottleneck — in fact, the main triumph of Thompson’s “mighty Curve” was to surmount the Alleghenies without switchbacks.
Of course, grading is easy nowadays, but in 1850 it was hard. Mostly it was done with pick-and-shovel. Cass was built much later, but even then a logging-railroad only needed quick-and-dirty.
Which meant switchbacks; two tails, which I guess means two switchbacks.
A train ascends Leatherbark Creek (“Legend has it you drink once from the Leatherbark, and you’ll always come back.”) and climbs into the first switchback-tail.
A brakie gets off and throws the switch, and the train backs up the parallel track which turns away from the lead.
The train eventually climbs into the second tail, somebody throws that switch, and the train pulls out onto the parallel track, which turns away and continues up the hill.
Eventually the train pulls into Whittaker, four miles from Cass.
Whittaker was a staging-area, and had a giant steam-powered setup for dragging logs out of the forest.
It also is stop #1, the place most Cass trains end at; but Cass also goes up all the way to Bald Knob, 4,842 feet above sea-level, the top, 2,500 feet above the valley of the Greenbrier River far below. There is a big wooden observation-deck.
Three-fourths of the way up is a branch to Spruce (trackage-rights), a tiny hilltop town that once had no access except by rail. (I’m sure now it has.) At Spruce, Cass connects with a now-abandoned Western Maryland branch, but it was so steep they got a Shay to operate it.
That’s “Big Six,” which Cass now operates as its own. But Big Six can’t operate to Bald Knob without reversing on a wye near the top. There is a tightly-curved connector of the two forks of the wye Big Six can’t negotiate. It derails.
To run engine-first to Bald Knob, that curve has to be negotiated. So the smaller Shays run to Bald Knob.
Cass ends at Bald Knob, high above the valley-floor. It’s high enough to have Canadian climate.
Not long after my first visit, Linda and I both went, staying at a house-motel in far-out Stony Bottom in the boonies. I had stayed there during trip #1; a motel from the ‘50s.
A few months ago we visited Cass again, but the house-motel had closed. We had to stay in yuppie-land, a giant ski-resort over the mountain from Cass.
It’s totally unlike Cass. Cass is a different world.
True to Connor tradition we rode all the way to Bald Knob. The train was pushed by one Shay and the Heisler (pulled in reverse on the first switchback). I think Cass has instituted pushing to reduce the incidence of cinder-in-eye. —Only one engine, the Shay, held the train back descending — the cars have brakes too; and a brakie on each car.
At the time I was thinking it might be my last visit, but probably not.
Cass is a wonderful candidate for the famblee reunion; we could rent a cottage.