Today, I took the opportunity to take a picture of the Morehead & North Fork Railroad. This is not a topic that I am very familiar with, but I know that for the years that I have either lived or worked in Morehead that I have always noticed this abandoned train station in Clearfield off of Highway 519 tucked in the corner. The M&NF Railroad (Morehead and North Fork Railroad) used to carry passenger cars as well as lumber and limestone. The railroad was incorporated at the turn of the 20th century.
It appears that portions of roads leading to West Liberty is of the old railroad route, but you will be hard press to find any remnants of the railroad as most of the railroad ties and bridges have been pulled up for development over the years.
This old freight yard has seen its better days and years. For me, it was a good opportunity to take a step back in the past to imagine the station in its glory days. I will say that taking pictures today was kind of creepy and I should not have been by myself taking pictures (not knowing what was nearby or dwelling in the abandoned structures on the lot), but I am glad that I took the chance. Who knows how many more years that this structure will be around. Unfortunately, unless someone or group actually invests to preserve it, then who knows how many more years it will have left.
In 2012 a group of five Moreheadeans reincorporated the Morehead & North Fork Railroad as a non-profit historical preservationist organization. They have acquired an old C&O caboose and are currently restoring it with plans to acquire a strip of land along the city by-pass and establish a park featuring the caboose, a boxcar (hopefuly the one at the old rail yards) and a locomotive. The boxcar, when restored, will house a museum of Rowan County railroad history.
ReplyDelete