Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway

Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway

The P&WV formed a connection between the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway and Western Maryland Railway.
Reporting mark	PWV
Locale	Connellsville, Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh Junction, Ohio
Dates of operation	July 2, 1904–October 16, 1964
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Headquarters	Greentree, PA

The Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railway (reporting mark PWV) was a railroad in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wheeling, West Virginia, areas. Originally built as the Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, a Pittsburgh extension of George J. Gould's Wabash Railroad, the venture entered receivership in 1908 and the line was cut loose. An extension completed in 1931 connected it to the Western Maryland Railway at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, forming the Alphabet Route, an independent line between the Northeastern United States and the Midwest. It was leased by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964 in conjunction with the N&W acquiring several other sections of the former Alphabet Route, but was leased to the new spinoff Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in 1990, just months before the N&W was merged into the Norfolk Southern Railway.

The original Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway built several massive engineering works, including the Wabash Terminal in downtown Pittsburgh, destroyed by fire in 1946. The Wabash Bridge over the Monongahela River into Pittsburgh was torn down in 1948, and on December 27, 2004, the Wabash Tunnel just southwest of the bridge opened as a high occupancy vehicle roadway through Mount Washington. As of December 2008 the two piers of the long gone Wabash Bridge remain standing.