Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway (1990)

The W&LE Railroad began standard gauge operations under investor Jay Gould in 1880. It's mainline ran from Wheeling to Zanesville to Cleveland, and it ran freight and passenger trains primarily between those cities. It eventually completed a route connecting Pittsburgh, PA (Rook) and Toledo, Ohio. Most freight traffic on the line was coal and iron ore, with general merchandise also making up a significant portion. Passenger service ended in 1940 just before the start of World War II.

In 1949, the New York, Chicago, & St. Louis Railroad, or Nickel Plate Road (NKP) as it was known, leased the W&LE. The W&LE was operated as the "Wheeling and Lake Erie District" of the NKP. In 1964, the Nickel Plate combined with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W), bringing the W&LE into N&W and, after the N&W-Southern Railway merger, Norfolk Southern.[1]

In 1990, the Norfolk Southern, sold some of its lines in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The sale included most of the former W&LE and the Akron, Canton and Youngstown Railroad, as well as a lease on the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad. The Wheeling Acquisition Corporation was created by a group of private investors to take ownership of a large portion of the sale. The company was renamed the "Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway" on May 1, 1990, before operations began.

In 1994, W&LE the former Akron and Barberton Belt Railroad and part of the Conrail “Cluster” railroad in the Akron, Ohio area. The two railroads were combined into the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway, which operates as a subsidiary of W&LE.

At its formation, trackage rights on Norfolk Southern were extended to the new organization to serve several limestone quarries in the Bellevue, Ohio area, and trackage rights with CSX Transportation from Connellsville, Pennsylvania to Hagerstown, Maryland, this being a remnant of the 1950s Alphabet Route of which the original W&LE was a part. W&LE Ry also maintains trackage rights from Wellington to Cleveland on CSX.

There are several portions of the original W&LE operated by companies other than the current W&LE. West of Bellevue, Ohio, the now-NS Toledo District was not sold back to W&LE. Immediately after W&LE operations began, Norfolk Southern removed the at-grade crossing in Bellevue, which connected the current W&LE Hartland District to the current NS Toledo District. W&LE now has trackage rights to Toledo on this line, obtained after the Conrail split in 1999. W&LE uses these rights to interchange with Canadian National Railway. Another section is the former Cleveland Division south of Harmon (east of Brewster), which was sold to the Ohio Central Railroad by NS in 1988.

In the sale, the W&LE acquired the Huron Branch, a line between Norwalk and the Huron docks, but the line was never activated north of the Norwalk city limits, and was later removed in its entirety. Until 2019, W&LE served the Huron Docks using trackage rights on NS's former Nickel Plate Road mainline (now the NS Cleveland District) from Bellevue using a connecting line to the docks built by the NKP in 1952. The trackage rights expired in 2019, and W&LE ceased operations to Huron.

Some other small portions of the original W&LE and AC&Y have been abandoned and/or replaced with trackage rights on parallel lines by W&LE. One of these instances occurs on the Carey Subdivision between Greenwich and New London, Ohio. W&LE uses trackage rights over CSX to move between the eastern and western portions of the Carey Subdivision. The partial-abandonment of the Carey Sub was done to remove two at-grade crossings between the CSX and W&LE Lines. A similar case is on the Rook Subdivision between Bowerston and Jewett, Ohio, where W&LE operates over the Ohio Central Railroad. This arrangement allowed the W&LE to remove approximately 12 miles of their route, which paralleled the now-used Ohio Central Route.

W&LE also has trackage rights to Lima, Ohio, that originally used CSX lines from Carey to Upper Sandusky to Lima, but after the lease of the CSX line (the former Pennsylvania Railroad Fort Wayne Line) by RailAmerica's Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad, W&LE now uses trackage rights from its lines at New London to Crestline, Ohio on CSX, then west on the CF&E to Lima. These trackage rights were also a result of the Conrail split.

Branch lines reach as far south as Benwood, West Virginia (just south of Wheeling) and as far east as Connellsville, Pennsylvania. The W&LE joins the Southwest Pennsylvania Railroad at Owensdale, Pennsylvania. The W&LE currently owns 575 miles (925 km) of track and retains trackage rights on another 265 miles (426 km),[2] totaling to 840 miles (1350km).

Most traffic on the Wheeling and Lake Erie includes stone, farm products, chemicals, forest products, steel products, petroleum, paper, and other traffic. Wheeling and Lake Erie moves approximately 140,000 carloads annually.

Wheeling and Lake Erie headquarters in Brewster. This was also the headquarters of the original W&LE.