Snowshoe

A gigantic flashy brochure arrived in today’s (Wednesday, May 30, 2007) mail for Snowshoe Mountain Ski Resort (YuppieLand) in West Virginny.
“What are we getting a Snowshoe Mountain brochure for?” Linda asked.
“Because that’s where we stayed a year-and-half ago on our Cass trip, which puts us on their mailing-list. The fabulous ‘50s motel in far-away Stony Bottom was kaput, so we had to stay at Showshoe’s gigantical motel” — corridors a mile long.
Snowshoe apparently also has a funky village atop its mountain (you can see it from the railroad), but essentially it’s a fabrication — stores and funky shops that would only appeal to the yuppie ski-set.
It’s way out in the middle of nowhere; but what appeals to me is Cass Scenic Railroad; over the hill.
Every railfan should be required by law to visit Cass — but only to hear the steam-whistles echo in the hollers. I’ve been there at least three times, and every visit I end up crying.
Cass is a West Virginia state park, but only the railroad right-of-way. Plus a giant parking-lot has been located down in the flood-plain of the Greenbrier River.
Plus the town is still extant. The station and company-store are still there, as are the tiny cottages (which can be rented) the lumber-jacks once lived in. Only the lumbermill is gone; it burned down years ago; after the timberstands had been depleted.
It’s a step back in time. Even Linda likes it, and she’s not a railfan.
But the fantabulous motel in Stony Bottom was kaput; the owners got sick and old.
Obviously the motel in Stony Bottom was not a serious motel: little more than a house with motel-units off to the side.
And the road wasn’t a main road. Only one lane, but paved. If anyone else approached, all moved to the shoulder, and tried to keep outta the forest.
No air-conditioning, no ice-machine, no coffee-maker, no Internet — are you kidding? I wasn’t expecting them to take our credit-card, but they did; with the original imprintable form from the ‘70s and a separate phonecall to the authorization-center in New York City.
What Linda remembers is their door-stops: bricks wrapped in aluminum-foil.
You woke up to the sound of birds chirping outside and a gurgling stream, not blatting Harleys like in Altoony.

“Linda” is my wife.

“Cass Scenic Railroad” is the restored remains of a old logging railroad; too steep and curvy for normal railroad operation. At that time (turn of the century), logging was mainly done with railroads, not large off-road equipment like now. The village was actually called “Cass;” and still is. Lumber would be harvested up in the hills, processed in the lumbermill, and shipped out on a railroad (now abandoned) along the Greenbrier River.

Cass has quite a few steam-engines, but they aren’t rod-engines (engines with side-rods to the driving-wheels). Instead most are “Shays;” a special application whereby locomotion was via a driveshaft and helical gears. Such engines were less likely to slip on steep hills, since their piston-thrusts could be more equally distributed — plus they could operate on very rough and rudimentary track.

“Altoony” is Altoona, PA, the location of Horseshoe Curve, by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to.