The Hoult Railroad Bridge, part of the CSX American Fibers Industrial Track, spans the Monongahela River in Hoult, West Virginia.
The Hoult Railroad Bridge, part of the CSX American Fibers Industrial Track, spans the Monongahela River in Hoult, West Virginia. This bridge is a component of the former Fairmont, Morgantown & Pittsburgh Railroad, a 56-mile line primarily used for coal transportation. Initially, this railroad was established in 1894 and later came under the control of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, providing a crucial link between Fairmont and Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
The structure of the bridge includes an approach from FM&P Junction featuring deck-type plate girder spans. It also has two skewed Pratt through trusses over the main channel of the river and a deck plate girder span crossing over the former lock chamber of Lock No. 15. It replaced an earlier bridge across from the railroad yard in Fairmont. 4
The Fairmont, Morgantown & Pittsburgh Railroad was pivotal in coal transport, with numerous mines situated along its length. However, the line’s traffic dwindled in the latter part of the 20th century, largely due to the closure of these coal mines.
Around 1983, the section of the railway line south of Morgantown was taken out of service due to a washout at Hildebrand. 1 Consequently, coal trains that usually traveled between Grafton and the areas of Brownsville and Connelsville in Pennsylvania were rerouted. This rerouting was facilitated through trackage rights on the Monongahela Railway, which ran north of Rivesville on the west bank of the river.
In 1989, CSX petitioned to abandon the FM&P between Fairmont and Point Marion, Pennsylvania. 3 A landslide between Morgantown and Fairmont on December 1990 severely impacted the FM&P Subdivision, prompting CSX, the owning company at the time, to decide against repairing the damage. As a result, they chose to abandon the line between Fairmont and the CSX M&K Subdivision (former Morgantown & Kingwood Railroad) in Morgantown in January 1991 2 and utilize trackage rights over the parallel Monongahela Railroad.
As of 2023, only a portion of the original FM&P line remains operational. This includes a 21.5-mile stretch operated by the Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad running from Greene Junction to Smithfield in Pennsylvania, and a shorter 2.3-mile section is still in use, extending from Palatine Junction near Fairmont to a pulp recycling facility near Sanford, including the bridge at Hoult. This latter section operates as part of CSX’s American Fibers Industrial Track.
Details
- State: West Virginia
- Route: CSX
- Status: Active (Railroad)
- Type: Plate Girder, Pratt Through Truss
- Total Length: 0
- Main Span Length: 0
- Spans: 0
- Deck Width: 0
- Roadway Width: 0
- Height of Structure: 0
- Above Vertical Clearance: 0
- Navigational Clearance: 0
Sources
- Workman, Michael. “Fairmont, West Virginia: A Historic Industrial Survey.” The Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology, 22 Mar. 1993, p. 63.
- “Little Creek.” West Virginia Historic Property Inventory Form, Jan. 1991.
- Robie, Dan. “Morgantown and Kingwood Railroad.” WVNC Rails.
- Workman, Michael. “Fairmont, West Virginia: A Historic Industrial Survey.” The Institute for the History of Technology and Industrial Archaeology, 22 Mar. 1993, p. 88.