By the the 1890's logging railroads were springing up all along the P&C to tap the hemlock and hardwoods along the creekbeds and ridgetops and other places too rocky to farm. By coincidence, about this time the advent of small geared locomotives made steep and twisty logging roads practical and secondly, the great northern Pennsylvania forest tracts were just about harvested for the time being. At Meyersdale, the B&O had built the Salisbury Branch to travel south along the Casselman to tap lumber and coal traffic. Some of the logging operators were locals but the more substantial ones came from Northern Pennsylvania.
So it was in 1900 Worth and Cortez Jennings moved from Sullivan County Pennsylvania to Northern Garrett County to start a logging enterprise. Recall that 1900 was a much different world than today, the Jennings brothers had to create their own town, labor had to live close to work without the ability to commute in autos. Likewise, each logging capitalist had to provide his own transportation system (the logging railroad) in this time before taxpayer supported highway systems. In this case the Jennings Brothers Railroad was built from near the end of the B&O's Salisbury Branch (appropriately called Worth Junction) to the mill site at the town they founded (Jennings), a total of about 12 miles. If you walk along a railroad sometime, take notice of the amount of steel, ties and ballast involved to appreciate the capital investment of even a modest shortline railway. All of this needed to be in place before the revenue from the timber could start to pay. When we criticize the clear cutting of these loggers, we should also appreciate what they had at stake.
The Jennings brothers' logging and sawmill operation was successful, running for a respectable 18 or 19 years and, for a time, the railroad thrived. Eventually logging and coal mines extended its route to near Bittinger Maryland. From Bittinger, a logging spur ran all the way to the end of the South Branch of the Casselman on a very old land grant,Cunningham Dale, many miles from Worth Junction. In the meantime, other timber operations set up along the Jennings Brothers Railroad and in 1912 the railroad was separately chartered with the improbable name of Northern Maryland and Tidewater Railroad. Putting lofty destinations in the names of railroads was a time honored practice, but tidewater was a goal definitely out of the reach of this road. Perhaps the incorporators had come across some of the C&O Canal literature, a nearly religious venture that laid claim to every river route in the Alleghenies including the Casselman. The Northern Maryland and Tidewater apparently was a thinly capitalized organization that had to reorganize when the Jennings brothers lumber operation closed in 1918. Because of the other lumber operations, coal mining and,in later years, a firebrick works, the railroad did not liquidate, but was reformed as the more modestly named Castleman Valley Railroad and later (in another reorganization) as the Castleman River Railroad ( the spelling of the river's name was apparently in dispute, very old maps show the Castleman spelling as opposed to today's Casselman spelling). In any event, the Castleman River Railroad survived on coal and firebrick and maybe the odd carload of inbound freight. In later years when operated as the Castleman River Railroad, it might have been hard to distinquish this operation from the rest of the B&O's Salisbury Branch, as that road's motive power was used. Benjamin Kline reports that the Castleman River Railroad ran the last of the Buffalo and Susquehanna steam locomotives and that the B&O also leased the rail and supplied cinder ballast. Going back to the beginning, one wonders why the B&O did not build this natural extention of the Salisbury Branch themselves, maybe the B&O did not want to charter the Salisbury Branch in Maryland. Perhaps the B&O did give assistance to the Jennings Brothers, for example, on site examination indicates the B&O specifically bridged the Casselman River to reach Worth Junction.
By 1959, with lumber operations too small to use rail transportation and the locally owned coal mines playing out, the common carrier railroad filed for abandonment. The most likely continuing user, the firebrick works, continued to operate with truck transportation of its finished product. The Castleman River Railroad died a quiet death, in steam to the end. Whether the State of Maryland or Garrett County did anything to keep it alive is unknown to the writer, but it is doubtful.
Information on Jennings Brother's Only New Locomotive-Shay No. 8
Shop Number 2580 - Built for: Jennings BrothersFrom Shaylocomotive.com| Built: 09-21-1912 | Class: 70-3 | Trucks: 3 |
| Cylinders: [#-Diam x Stroke] 3 - 12 x 15 | Gear Ratio: 2.25 | Wheel Diam: 36" |
| Gauge: std | Boiler: [Style - Diam.] E.W.T. - 50" | Fuel Type: Coal |
| Fuel Capacity: 5 Tons | Water Capacity: 3000 Gallons | Empty Weight: As built 119,600 |
Owners:
Jennings Brothers, Jennings Brothers RR #8, West Salisbury, PA
M. Knecht & Son, Meyersdale, PA
(6-1923) Northern Maryland & Tidewater RR #8, Jennings, MD
(7-1924) Birmingham Rail & Loco. Co. (D) #1539, Birmingham, AL
(8-19-1925) Swift-Hunter Lumber Co. #80, Atmore, AL
(by 5-28-1943) Champion Fibre Co., Tennessee & North Carolina RR #80, Andrews (?Hayesville), NC
Disposition: (1952) Scrapped
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Upper Casselman River Valley
The point of this map is that the Casselman Valley has it all, coal, timber and farming. The valley created by the Casselman and its tributaries coincides with a syncline that trends in the same direction (northeast) and dips in the same direction. This fact is important to the existence of coal beds, as just as often, a stream will erode the same coal beds away on an anticline. In this section of the Alleghenies, about every other valley has coal deposits. In the case of the Casselman Valley, the coal close enough to the surface to be mined were smaller seams, as compared with the great Georges Creek field where the 14 foot Big Vein (Pittsburgh) seam was close to the surface. Casselman Valley mines, therefore, were smaller, local affairs. Reports are that large reserves of the Kittaning seams are in place, accessible only by deep mining, however, the upper (Maryland) portion of the valley has been sealed off from rail transportation by the National Freeway (I-68.)making their recovery doubtful
Because the Casselman Valley is in the Mississippi system, it is a long ways to tidewater and the upper valley is fairly broad and relatively flat. The early German settlers cleared much of the timber in all places reasonable to do so for farming. What was left was the steeper rock-strewn ridgelines of Negro and Meadow Mountains and the upper creek hollows. Therefore, again, the Casselman Valley did not have the larger timber operators as did the Yough, Savage River, or North Branch Potomac valleys. The Jennings Brothers and the Muncy Lumber operations were the largest. Compare the Casselman Valley with the Savage River Valley on the southeast side of Meadow Mountain. The contour here is much steeper as the Savage River is on the Atlantic side of the Eastern Continental Divide and must go from 3,000 feet elevation to tidewater in a much shorter distance. All of the Savage River Valley except some small homesteads right around the floodplain and some farmland on the very tops of the ridges were forested and harvested by loggers. The Savage River Valley cut down through an anticline, so coal was washed away far back in geologic time. © Dave Cathell
Coal in Maryland occurs in five elongate structural basins or snyclines, in Garrett and Western Allegany Counties of Maryland. These basins are The Georges Creek Basin, named for the stream that flows southwestward through the basin to the North Branch of the Potomac River; The Upper Potomac Basin along the North Branch of the Potomac River; The Casselman Basin, named for the Casselman River which flows northward through the basin into Pennsylvania; The Lower Youghiogheney and Upper Youghiogheny Basins, named for the Youghiogheney River which flows northward toward Pennsylvania.
The Casselman Basin lies in central Garrett County and is the southern end of the Somerset or Berlin Basin of Pennsylvania. The basin is 18 miles long by about five miles wide and extends from Deep Creek Lake at Cherry Creek northeast to the State line. The most important coal seams in this basin from the standpoint of known recoverable reserves and quality are: Lower Bakerstown, Upper Feeport, and Upper Kittanning.
COAL RESERVES BY TONS
The Georges Creek Basin contains the most recoverable reserves in the State, 354.1 million tons or 41%. The Potomac Basin contains 223.5 million tons or 26%, The Casselman Basin contains 116 million tons or 13.6, the Lower Youghiogheny Basin contains 107 million tons or 12.4%, and the Upper Youghiogheny Basin contains 54.3 million tons or 6.9% of the recoverable coal reserves.