AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On a corner lot in the heart of old Pennsboro, West Virginia, the little one-story brick building once known as the Pennsboro B&O Depot tells the story of a town that grew up around the railroad—and then refused to let that story disappear. Saved from the wrecking ball by volunteers, restored and reopened, it now serves as a small railroad museum, a community gathering place, and the trailhead for a popular rails-to-trails path through the hills of Ritchie County.↗↗
Built by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the depot is a compact, charming piece of Victorian railway architecture set just steps from where the trains once ran. It rewards a short, unhurried visit: a look inside the old station, a stroll along the former right-of-way, and a window onto a way of life that the rails once carried into this corner of Appalachia.↗↗
A station built by the Baltimore & Ohio
The depot stands on a less-than-one-acre corner lot where Broadway Street meets Collins Avenue, its back set into a small bank with steps dropping from the old passenger platform down to the street. A modest building of roughly 1,315 square feet divided into three rooms, it is built of brick on a concrete foundation under a metal roof, with wood trim—late-Victorian work in the Eastlake and Stick style that the B&O favored for its small stations. Construction happened in two stages: the east end went up around 1883, and the west end was added, with the older portion remodeled, around 1900.
