Description
The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society is proud to help bridge past and present as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Wheeling Acquisition Corporation, the group that established the modern Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Company in 1990.
Though this incarnation is relatively young, its legacy runs deep — tracing its roots to the original Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, founded in 1871. Today’s W&LE operates more than 840 miles of track across Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania — all of it former territory of its namesake predecessor.
The original W&LE was leased by the Nickel Plate Road in 1949, folded into the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1964, and later became part of the Norfolk Southern system before its rebirth as an independent regional railroad. Today, over 430 Wheeling employees keep that legacy alive, moving more than 140,000 carloads annually, making the W&LE one of the busiest regional railroads in the nation.
