 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (January 2013) |
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 The P&WV formed a connection between the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway and Western Maryland Railway. | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Greentree, PA |
| Reporting mark | PWV |
| Locale | Connellsville, Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh Junction, Ohio |
| Dates of operation | July 2, 1904–October 16, 1964 |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
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 part of the Alphabet Route, a coalition of independent lines 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, damaged by two fires in 1946 and demolished in 1953. The Wabash Bridge over the Monongahela River into Pittsburgh was torn down in 1948. On December 27, 2004, the Wabash Tunnel just southwest of the bridge opened as a high occupancy vehicle roadway through Mount Washington. As of May 2024 the two piers of the long-gone Wabash Bridge remain standing.
The line included a branch to West End, Pennsylvania, abandoned in 2011, and a branch to West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, known as the Mifflin Branch. It also had a small industrial branch located near Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania.
At the end of 1960, P&WV operated 132 mi (212 km) of the road on 223 mi (359 km) of the track; that year it reported 439 million net ton-miles of revenue freight.