Winfield Junction
The Winfield Rail Road was constructed during 1890 and 1891 from Monroeville in Buffalo Township to the site of the Winfield Furnace in Winfield Township. The Winfield Junction was where the track veered right at a bridge crossing the Little Buffalo Creek from the Butler Branch to West Winfield where at one time existed an entire community of company housing and numerous industries. Today West Winfield isn’t even a “ghost town” it is non-existent. The last of the housing was raised in the early 1980’s about the time the Winfield Railroad track was lifted.
West Winfield had its roots in the 1847 Iron Furnace. Webster Keasey and J.A. Ranson operated a coal mine then started the Acme Limestone Company in 1893 that, along with the Winfield Railroad in 1890, created a boom town. During its hay day it had a school, 2 churches, numerous houses, a hotel, a general store and many bars. The list of industries is long beginning with the two that are still there, Armstrong Cement and the Limestone Mine. Others that came and went during the life of the Winfield Railroad were: the Moonlight Mushroom Mine, Rough Run Manufacturing Company (salt works 1891), Acme Limestone, Limited (1894), F.W. McKee & Company (Limestone, circa 1898), Darlington Sandstone and Duquesne Fireproofing Company (fire clay product, circa 1900)
By the mid teens of the 1900’s there were actually more passenger trains on the Winfield Railroad than freight trains. As many as 12 passenger trains would pass on this remote track coming and going from West Winfield to Freeport. Although West Winfield was a thriving industrial community the passenger train service surpassed the freight trains possibly 3-1.
The bridge at Winfield Junction connecting the Butler Branch with the Winfield Railroad was rebuilt in 1910. At this isolated junction was a continuously manned Block Station until the 1930’s when passenger service was abandoned. It was then replaced with an unmanned Block Station. Photograph on left shows the Winfield Railroad cars and tracks. The photograph above shows the Winfield Railroad steam engine compliments of Wayne Coles’s book “Ghost Railroads V …”