Allow me to jump in and speculate like crazy.
In 1954 I went to Bethany WV to visit Bethany College. Our route took us to Wellsburg WV. There, we headed more or less eastward on a road which followed a creek valley all the way to Bethany. A couple miles short of Bethany, the road made a hard left turn and went into a tall, narrow tunnel. At the far end of the tunnel, the road made a right angle turn to the left and followed along the side of the valley to Bethany.
At the time, I thought it was a railroad tunnel. It looked like one and it seemed unlikely the West Virginia highway department would go to all the trouble of building a tunnel there. (Although a recent topo map seems to indicate that the tunnel was daylighted some time in the past decade or two.)
It may be that at the Bethany end of the tunnel I saw remans of a bridge abutment where the railroad would have gone straight out across the valley. It's been too long, all I remember for sure is the tunnel.
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shows the road making the hard turn at the eastern end of the tunnel. (On the western side of the tunnel the road is hidden in the shadow of the hill.)
The USGS topo map collection at historical.maptech.com has a Wheeling quadrangle from 1942. That shows a railroad leaving the Ohio on the south end of Wellsburg, running a mile or so out the valley in which the road to Bethany is located.
One should note also that Bethany is a short distance, maybe a mile, from the West Virginia-Penna state line.
All the foregoing is fact. Now watch me leap from conclusion to conclusion.
I suspect, but can't prove, that there was at some time before 1954 a railroad from Wellsburg to Bethany. "Wellsburg and State Line" would have been a reasonable name. It may even have existed mainly to carry passengers to and from the college. Eventually, it went out of business, perhaps the creditors seized the property to try to recover what they were owed.
Note that "property passed to the PCC&StL", not "merged into PCC&StL", or "acquired by PCC&StL".
Perhaps the Panhandle bought the mile or so of track at the Wellsburg end to use as a spur to reach a factory or some such. If that was the way of it, all they bought was a piece of track, not a railroad company. Thus, even if it happened in 1915, the valuation report would not mention the W&SL because it had ceased to exist before the Panhandle bought the track.
http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T ... =11134&W=2
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Bob Netzlof